


Cruel Intentions

by penmarks



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes-centric, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Civil War (Marvel), F/M, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Major Original Character(s), Marvel Universe, Minor Original Character(s), Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Other, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Original Character, POV Original Female Character, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Pre-Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Civil War (Marvel), Protective Bucky Barnes, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-03-15 15:00:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 27
Words: 42,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13615833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penmarks/pseuds/penmarks
Summary: ❝She had nothing but cruel intentions.❞In which he is on an unstable path to recovery and she will stop at nothing to drive him off the rails.





	1. preface

 

 

 **There was nothing pure about Savannah King.** Everything she touched turned to ash. All her life she had wanted to destroy. Even as a child, she had an insatiable hunger for destruction. Her parents could see the darkness in their pretty daughter's eyes and feared the worst. 

The worst came when she set fire to their family home. She wanted to feel the fire lick at her skin and watch it tear their lives apart. She heard her parents screams in the early hours of the morning and watched in silence as the flames ripped open her own flesh.

Everything once normal about her vanished on the winds of smoke.Savannah became a murderer that night. Scars still littered her skin. 

 **A long-forgotten organization**  paid her a visit before she had even recovered from her self-inflicted injuries. They had been watching her for years, keeping tabs on her destructive tendencies. 

Savannah didn't require their intensive brainwashing procedures or threats to comply to their bidding. All they had to do was place a body in front of her and she would sink her nails in because she had nothing but cruel intentions.

When a new face pops up in her life, a man they said had been asleep for many years, she couldn't help her own curiosity.

**This man was from the past and blood tainted his soul.**

She watched him grow. She watched them tear him down.  Over and over. He was strong, always fighting back. Savannah helped create the weapon that was The Winter Soldier. She enjoyed watching the torment they inflicted on his mind,  the way they ripped him apart and put him back together in the wrong order each time. 

But when Bucky Barnes flips a switch, his memories come flooding back. Parts of his old soul fight to return to the surface,  and it's Savannah's chest that cracks open with pain. 

The man she thought was her equal, the man she had always felt so connected to because she believed they shared the same dark heart, vanishes into thin air. It is her mission to find him and bring him back into the fold. 

**Dead or alive.**

 


	2. 01.

**June 16, 2003.**

**ICU, S.H.I.E.L.D. Medical Facility.**

**Washington, D.C.**

 

The high-pitched ringing sound, one of the last things she remembered, returned to her all at once. She tried to open her eyes but shut them again immediately. Was the ringing coming from the fluorescent lights above her or from inside her own head? It was difficult to make a distinction.

When Savannah could finally open her eyes, she couldn't make out much. The shock of sterile, white light around her drowned out much else. As she tried to take a deep breath, she was acutely aware of a burning sensation that encompassed her entire body. It wasn't quite as severe as when the flames had torn at her skin, but it gave her the same rush.

Though thoroughly disoriented, Savannah had the clarity of mind to recognize what she had done. She had been successful, she knew it in her heart. They were all dead, but she had survived.

It brought a smile to her face. As much of a smile as her burnt and bandaged face could manage.

"Morning, sunshine," a husky voice called from across the hospital room. Savannah turned her head slowly. Her strained, faint smirk lingered. "We were starting to think you weren't going to wake up."

"We?" Savannah tried to clear her throat, but even that action sent a wave of unbearable pain through her body. She hardly recognized her own voice.

"Let's take it easy on your end of the conversation, kid." The man crossed the room to her bedside, and she took notice of the thick manila folder tucked neatly under his arm. He was a shadowy man. Charming. She liked him already. "You'll have plenty of time to prove yourself. For now, I'll just tell you what you need to know."

He pulled one of the metal chairs closer to her bed and plopped down. "Name's Brock Rumlow. I've been assigned to your case."

"My—"

"Yes, your case. What did I say about talking, kid?" He opened the file folder and leaned back until the front legs of the chair were lifted off the ground. "Now, settle in while I tell you a bedtime story."

Savannah scoffed, or at least tried to. She didn't even really mind the pain that radiated through every inch of her body, but the damage definitely limited her ability to do much of anything.

"Five years old, killing neighborhood pets," Brock said, his finger tracing along typed lines of text. "By seven, your parents were worried about you being around your little sister. Eight, you're seriously injuring your classmates. And then, oh... ten. You actually hospitalized—"

"I know how this story ends," Savannah said. It hurt to speak, but she didn't care to hear him recite her list of accomplishments. She rolled her eyes and turned her head toward him. The bandages on the right side of her face were starting to itch. "It's pretty boring. Until recently."

He settled back in the chair, arms crossed. "Thirteen. Whole family's dead and the house is a pile of ash. Impressive."

"I was working up to this." She managed a shrug. "So what do you want? Gonna take me away to a foster home? Wouldn't recommend it."

Something glimmered in Brock's eyes that excited Savannah more than his mere presence. It wasn't until then that she saw the embroidered emblem on the sleeve of his jacket.She tilted her head to try to read it.

_Strategic Homeland_ _Intervention..._

Brock scoffed and turned the sleeve away before she could finish reading. 

"Don't mind that. It's a cover."

_Cover._  This conversation was suddenly more interesting.

He leaned in closer until his elbows were propped on the edge of her bed.

"I think you've got something, Savannah. Something very unique. Something valuable. I'm not the only one, either. We've had an eye on you for a long time."

The stinging sensation across her body was replaced with a sort of excited tingling. She wanted to hear more.

"You never told me who  _we_  are."

A smirk crept onto Brock's lips and encompassed his entire face as he leaned back in his chair. He looked... triumphant. Proud, almost.

"We'll get to that. For now, all you need to know is that we're going to have a lot of fun together."


	3. 02.

**February 19, 2009.**

**Training Room, HYDRA BASE.**

**Undisclosed Location.**

 

"A bedtime story, you called it." Savannah scoffed as she dodged a blow from Brock and made an attempt to sweep his legs.

He moved out of her reach. She swung at him and their arms collided before she latched onto the back of his neck and brought him down to the stiff practice mat beneath their feet.

"You were thirteen, I was trying to be relatable." He took control of her forearms and used the leverage of her body to flip Savannah over his head and onto her back. She didn't stay down long and soon had her knee digging into the middle of his chest. Brock wheezed and raised his arms to try to dismount her, but she was too fast for him and quickly had them pinned above his head. "It was new territory for me. They didn't always have me recruiting, you know."

"Mm," Savannah hummed, shifting all of her weight to her left knee. Brock sucked in a sharp breath and writhed beneath her, which only motivated her further. "It would've been much more fun if you skipped right to trying to indoctrinate me, rather than trying to repeat my whole life story back to me."

Brock coughed and struggled harder, his face starting to turn red. Savannah tilted her head and pressed down harder on his wrists. Her hair fell over one shoulder and into his eyes. It was beyond entertaining to watch him shake his head in an attempt to get a clear view of her.

"Well—" His voice was cut off by another helpless gasp for breath that didn't quite make it to his lungs. "I didn't know what I was dealing with. Figured you were another... troubled teen that would require our... more intensive methods."

"Tell me, Brock," Savannah said. She leaned closer to his face, which drove her knee even deeper into the point of his sternum. "Do I seem troubled to you? Would you say violence  _troubles_  me?"

"Enough."

She lifted her head slowly to look at the agent standing in the doorway. She reluctantly removed herself from Brock's trembling body and stood to face her superior. He was a thinner man than the one she had just taken down, and even as he spoke, his name didn't come to Savannah. 

Names were, for the most part, unimportant to her. Especially when it came to the agents that were "above" her.

"Agent Rumlow, would you like to explain to me why this keeps happening?"

Savannah rolled her eyes and turned away from both of them with a toss of her dark mass of hair. She heard Brock struggle to stand and begin to give an answer, but she cut him off.

"Because it gets him off to relive our past together, as if he put in any actual work into my initiation." She turned back to them and crossed her arms. "He has also repeatedly told me that if I can beat him in hand-to-hand combat, I can meet him."

"Sorry?"

Savannah narrowed her eyes and stepped closer.

"The Asset. I know he's here somewhere and it's not fair that I'm the only one who hasn't gotten to play with him."

She had to fight off a smile when the two men shared an anxious, knowing glance with each other.

"Agent King, The Asset is not a toy. There's good reason that access to him is limited only to essential staff and agents of the highest ranking."

"Bullshit," Savannah deadpanned. "I've heard the way Pierce talks about him. The man is a toy, a plaything—"

"An  _asset_ ," Rumlow asserted. He mirrored Savannah's stance and maintained hard eye contact with her, though it was obvious he was still catching his breath. "He's a vital asset to our cause. Pierce has a whole team to handle him that has been evolving for the past seventy years. Their process is very precise, perfected to a science. We can't have...  _children_  interfering with—"

Savannah moved on Rumlow before any of them could blink or take a breath. He hit the mat with a hollow  _thud_  and Savannah felt the air leave his lungs. She didn't hold back on her laughter as she pulled her sidearm from a thigh holster and pressed the barrel to his temple.

"AGENT KING!"

She knew the man at the door hadn't moved from his place. He didn't even dare pull his own firearm on her. And yet for some reason, Brock Rumlow had the audacity to call  _her_  a child.

She narrowed her attention to the wheezing man beneath her, offering him a cold smile as her finger petted the trigger. He only stared at her with the same cold eyes, though his entire body betrayed his mask of unfazed indifference.

"I'm sorry, Brock, I don't think caught that last part." Savannah sighed heavily and scratched her own head with the barrel of her pistol. "I could have sworn you were saying something incredibly demeaning and incorrect, but please, correct me if I'm wrong."

"Next week," Brock said with a trembling breath. "Next week, we'll bring you in next week."

A sound of protest from across the room made Savannah laugh. "One second."

She turned and fired a shot into the chest of the man standing in the doorway. When his body collided with the floor and he laid still, she turned her full attention back to Brock.

"You were saying?"


	4. 03.

**February 24, 2009.**

**Asset Containment.**

**Undisclosed Location.**

 

"All right, listen up." Brock tucked a pistol down the back of his pants. "You follow protocol. I mean that. Hey, this is important! Are you listening to me, King?"  
  
Savannah tossed her hair over one shoulder and holstered her own firearm. "Sure. Can we proceed yet?"  
  
"No. Not until you listen to me."  
  
She rolled her eyes and turned to face him, hands on her hips. "Listening."  
  
"Protocol," Brock said, narrowing his eyes at her. "You stay at least twenty feet back. You don't speak. If, for some reason, you are speaking, you do not call him by his name. Soldier, Asset, Soldat—"  
  
"Sorry, Soldat?" Savannah snorted and turned her back again to adjust her belt. "That's ridiculous."  
  
"It's Russian or something."  
  
"I  _know_. It's fucking ridiculous."  
  
"He responds well to it. We use what works." He moved so he was in front of her again, forcing eye contact. "Which is why you follow protocol. Understood?"  
  
"Yes, understood," Savannah said with another roll of her eyes. "Let's go."  
  
Brock glared at her but turned toward the heavy, multiple-bolted door. He pressed one finger to his ear and mumbled a string of what Savannah recognized as a mixture of code names and something else.  
  
Savannah had to restrain herself from bouncing up and down on her heels. The Asset fascinated her, even from the distance she was forced to keep. She had read up on him, studied the files that HYDRA kept. She was very familiar with their archive on him, which was more than seventy years old.  
  
From Nazi Germany to Siberia to an underground holding facility in Southern Virginia, she was more than familiar with the history of the one they called the Winter Soldier.  
  
The door opened inward and revealed a sterile-looking room full of agents. As Savannah trailed behind Brock, the group split in two. Alexander Pierce was already standing in front of the Asset, his hands folded behind his back. She couldn't make out the orders he was delivering, but she did catch her own name.  
  
"They haven't wiped in a few days," Brock said under his breath. "He's been well-behaved for the most part. Sometimes he gets unstable. Pay attention."  
  
"What did Pierce say about me?" Savannah asked without taking her eyes off from the pristine man strapped into some kind of machine by both his arms. She was fascinated by the way his bionic limb sparkled, even under the dim fluorescents.  
  
"He's considering bringing you on to the handling team, depending on how the Asset reacts. He's giving him an introduction." Brock took a step forward when Alexander turned to face them. His eyes skipped over all the other agents, trained only on Savannah. "Looks like you're up."  
  
She stepped forward without hesitation. Her stomach flipped with unadulterated excitement as she met the eyes of the stone-faced man before her. Alexander laid a hand on her lower back and leaned in close.  
  
"Rumlow briefed you on protocol?"   
  
She nodded absentmindedly, already moving forward.  
  
A cold smile crept onto Savannah's thin, pink lips as she knelt in front of the Asset. She had to clench her hands together in her lap to stop from reaching out to touch him. He only continued to stare at her with a completely blank expression, exactly like the machine he was.  
  
It wasn't until she spoke that his expression changed and he suddenly looked exponentially more human.  
  
"Good morning, Sergeant Barnes." A collective sound of protest went around the room and Alexander's hand came down on her shoulder, but she didn't move an inch. She was entranced by him, and now she seemed to have his attention as well. "My name is Savannah King. It's an honor."  
  
She waited several moments, but his troubled expression didn't change. A smirk of victory was stuck on Savannah's face as she slowly stood and took a step back. She turned to leave the room and a cacophony of chaos followed her. Her smirk turned quickly into a triumphant grin.  
  
She didn't have to turn back to recognize it as the sound of the Asset revolting against his handling team.  
  
It had worked. Just as simple as she had hoped.  
  
"King!"  
  
Brock came up from behind and cut her off in the hallway, looking positively bewildered. She couldn't help but smile even wider. Her cheeks were beginning to hurt.  
  
"What the fuck was that? Do you have any idea how much you just set us back? It will take weeks to force him back into submission. We'll have to wipe him every day and double down on every goddamn effort. We were so fucking close! We were so fucking close to breaking him." He shook his head and took a single step toward her. "I should kill you myself. What the fuck is wrong with you?"  
  
Savannah lowered her chin and tilted her head. She laid a gentle hand on Brock's chest and stepped as close to him as she could get.  
  
"I told you. It's my turn to play."  
  



	5. 04.

**February 25, 2009.**

**Conference Room, HYDRA Base.**

**Undisclosed Location.**

 

"She's completely out of control!"

Rumlow slammed his hands down on the surface of the hardwood table. He was surrounded by a room full of agents. He was a superior to most of them, aside from Alexander Pierce and Jasper Sitwell—the man in charge and his right-hand man.

"And you're telling me you're still considering the possibility of her being instated on the handling team. Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Brock, listen, I don't think you're hearing us out," Jasper said. He stepped forward, his hands clasped together in a pathetic show of faux diplomacy. "This isn't about the breach in protocol. That... That is completely unacceptable. She will be reprimanded for her actions. Our concern is—"

"If anyone else pulled that shit, Pierce would've put a bullet through their head without a second goddamn thought. Without hesitation. But suddenly—" Brock shook his head, trying to compose himself. He was having a hard time. His blood was boiling. "This is wrong. She's a risk. She always has been. This is crossing the line. She could cost us all of our progress if we continue like this. She's a liability."

"None of our progress will be jeopardized," Alexander said from across the room. He stood in front of the screen that was displaying footage of the day before. The actions in question. Savannah King practically burning down all of HYDRA with a few simple words. "This is one of the best displays of power over the Asset that I've seen."

Brock couldn't help but scoff in disgust. "You're joking, right? That isn't power. That's careless disregard for the cause. The  _only_ reason he reacted that way is because he hadn't been wiped in over two weeks. Why are you making excuses?"

"They're not excuses," Sitwell chimed in. Rumlow rolled his eyes and turned his back to both of them. "Brock, Savannah King could be the next breakthrough. We just need to... refine her skills."

"No," he said, turning back around on his heels. "We either need to kill her or wipe her. That's the only way we'll make the most of her."

"Don't be ridiculous." Pierce turned away from the screen and slowly made his way over to Sitwell. They both stood across the table from Rumlow and the five other agents in the room, who had remained completely silent. "The only reason he can withstand what we do here is because of the super soldier serum. Trying to do the same to Savannah, or any other non-Enhanced, would kill them without a doubt."

"Even better," Rumlow muttered. He turned to the handful of his colleagues. Their expressions ranged from terrified to infuriated. Still, none of had the nerve to speak up. Pathetic. "Anyone else? I can't be the only one who sees the huge fucking problem here."

"No, it's definitely a problem," one of the women at the back of the group said. "Brock is right. Director Pierce would have been the first to personally execute anyone who decided to break any of the Asset Protocols."

"He's probably got a thing for King," another said, a man this time. "It seems to be going around."

All of their eyes fell back on Brock for a moment. He spun back around to spew more venom, but stopped short. The door had opened a crack and Savannah slid herself inside, a mass of long, dark hair and black, skin tight clothing. All of the acid that had been fueling him for the last twenty minutes suddenly evaporated.

"Oh, don't go quiet on my account." Her caramel eyes flicked to the screen, the paused image of the Asset breaking an agent's neck. A smile crept onto her face. "I see you're watching my favorite movie."

"Agent King, we were actually just discussing—"

"No. Hang on a second," another man protested. He stepped to the front of the group of agents, his face bright red. Brock figured it was probably a mixture of anger and embarrassment of having to speak out against the agent that had just entered the room. It was often a fatal mistake. "Since when does this kid have the authorization to barge into any meeting she damn well pleases?"

"Agent Mackin, I understand your concern," Sitwell said. He stepped forward and laid his hands on the table, his eyes moving between Savannah, Brock, and the cherry-faced man. "But we've taken this into careful consideration. Agent King is—"

"She's a liability, like Rumlow said."

Savannah's eyes settled on Brock next. There was a slight tilt to her a head, a glimmer in her eye that said,  _oh, really?_  Brock rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, hoping to stave off another bloodbath. At the very least, he wanted to spare himself another attack from her. His chest still hurt where she had tried to drive his sternum through his spinal column.

"Director Pierce and I both disagree," Jasper went on. "Agent King has demonstrated a potential to assert revolutionary levels of power over the Asset. It's, quite frankly, remarkable."

Mackin seemed to have lost his patience. He lunged forward and violently hit the play button on the remote Pierce had left lying on the table. The footage from the previous day played back.

Even without audio, it sent a shiver down Brock's spine.

Savannah stood and walked away from the Asset. His cold, empty eyes followed her. There was a slight furrow in his brow that had appeared after she called him by his name. The moment she was out of frame—and out of the Asset's sight—all hell broke loose. Brock didn't need sound. He remembered all of them clearly.

The Asset let out a bellowing cry and tore out of his vibranium restraints. It wasn't the first time, and now Brock had the feeling it would be far from the last.

He tore through the crowd of agents faster than they could get out of range. The ones closest to him were gone with a snap of their necks. The next few were quickly disarmed, and their weapons were used against more agents, three more of which were shot dead. None of them were a match for that bionic arm.

It wasn't until Pierce stepped forward that the Asset lowered the pistols in each of his hands.

_"Enough."_

There was only a momentary hesitation. Pierce had only begun to raise his own weapon before the Asset dropped his and backed up until he was sitting down again. Even without the restraints on his arms, he leaned back and allowed the clamps to be placed on either side of his skull.

Rumlow turned to watch Savannah's reaction. The smile on her face grew as the screams of the Asset echoed through Rumlow's mind. He remembered the sound of them clearly after the countless times he'd witness this process go down. They weren't necessarily disturbing to him, but he definitely didn't find the euphoria in them that Savannah seemed to.

"Do you see what you did? Do you understand the gravity of your careless actions?"

Mackin stepped around the edge of the table, closing in on her. Rumlow took a step back. He recognized the look on her face. Cool, calculating.

A few more agents chimed in, suddenly emboldened by Mackin's outburst. Brock knew better. He wasn't sure that was the case for Pierce or Sitwell. He was actually starting to believe that they were enjoying this sabotage.

"Some of my best work," Savannah said quietly. She crossed her arms and leaned in the doorway, her hair falling over one shoulder. "I'm sorry you don't feel the same."

"Four people are dead. Two more are in the hospital with bullet wounds that we can't explain to S.H.I.E.L.D.! The point of the handling team is to  _handle_  the Asset and keep our progress a secret until he's ready." Mackin moved in closer to Savannah. Rumlow shook his head and moved around the other end of the table, beside Pierce and Sitwell. They remained silent. "You're just an arrogant child. I don't expect you to understand because  _they_ don't even expect you to understand. You'll keep getting away with this shit until you burn HYDRA to the ground. All for what? A cute face and a nice piece of ass."

Something shifted in Savannah's face. The sly smirk on her face turned to something more sinister as she pushed off from the doorway and moved closer to Mackin, if that were even possible after how close he had already gotten to her.

"You really think I'm pretty?"

Before he could answer, Savannah had already laced her fingers behind his head and driven her knee into the bridge of his nose. By the time the other agents in the room drew weapons on her, she had snapped Mackin's neck and adopted his handgun as her own.

Finally, Brock had the foresight to take cover. Six shots rang out, just enough for the whimpering and screaming agents on the other side of the room. Pierce and Sitwell weren't far behind him. It was mere seconds before the room fell silent again. He heard her make her way around the table, firing a few more shots into the bodies of fallen agents, either for good measure or good fun.

When Brock, Alexander, and Jasper emerged, she was perched on the edge of the table, wiping blood from her forehead. It smeared across her olive skin and down her temple. She was still holding the same sly smirk.

As blood began to seep onto the floor, panic blossomed in the pit of Brock Rumlow's stomach.

For the first time in a long time, he was afraid. He was slowly coming to the realization that Pierce and Sitwell may have been right about Savannah. If things were going to continue in this fashion, if she continued to murder her way to the top...

They'd have no choice but to give her anything she asked for. HYDRA couldn't afford to lose four to six men every other day of the week. No one was stopping her. She had proven to be too fast, too sharp, too cunning.

And for the first time in perhaps his entire life, Brock Rumlow felt...  _overwhelmed_.

Things had happened so fast. She'd over taken everything, manipulated all of them. A nineteen-year-old was running HYDRA. Maybe not as of that moment, but as Brock watched her reload and cock her gun, wipe the blood from the barrel, and point it at  _his_  head, he knew it was all over.

"So..." she said, calm as ever. "Did anyone else have any more questions?"

Pierce stood from their place of cover and dusted off his pants. He shook his head slowly and crossed the short length until he stood in front of Savannah. She kept her gun pointed at Brock, as if that were any motivation for Pierce to say what she wanted to hear. They all knew it wasn't.

"No, Agent King, I don't believe we do have any more questions." Slowly, she lowered her weapon. "Well... Maybe one."

Pierce glanced at the gun in her lap. She smirked and slid it across the table, out of reach. He crossed his arms and Rumlow watched his shoulders relax.

"What can we do to make the most of your abilities?"

He turned and nodded to Sitwell and Rumlow, who were still half-crouched behind a desk.

"We look forward to collaborating with you further." Pierce looked back to her before turning to leave entirely. "I hope we begin to see less resistance to your methods. If not, you've proven yourself perfectly capable of...  _dealing_  with dissent."

Rumlow stood slowly, his hands half-raised in surrender. He was prepared to be shot to death and expected nothing less from her. But Savannah showed no signs of further intentions for massacre. She greeted him with one of the warmest smiles he guessed she could give, which was still eerie.

They didn't speak as they left the room full of their dead colleagues.

Everything was about to change. Pierce's confidence gave the whole situation an air of thrill.

The possibility of real revolution was tangible. It was foreseeable. And yet, Rumlow still couldn't get past how young she was, how new.

HYDRA had practically raised Savannah King. He couldn't accept her as a superior.

But as they walked the cement corridors of the underground base, he began to feel more and more like he didn't have a choice. Pierce had chosen her.

She would be his right hand, the one he had been looking for for years. Someone to pass on his power to, his torture techniques, his ability to bring the Asset into full submission.

He'd chosen Savannah King, and Brock was trapped between years of trusting his judgment and the resentment of not being the one chosen.

Her caramel eyes stared over at him as they fell into step with each other, and he knew there wasn't a damn thing he could do but go along for the ride. 


	6. 05.

**March 18, 2009.**

**Locker Room, HYDRA Base.**

**Undisclosed Location.**

 

 

Savannah reached forward and turned the dial to "hot." Brock intertwined their fingers as she drew her hand back to her body and closed her eyes. She opened them again and looked at him in the reflection of the small mirror beneath the showerhead.

"I'm pretty buffed on all the literature on him, you know," she said, thoroughly uninterested in the naked man pressed against her. Despite that, she let her head fall back on his shoulder if for no other reason than to appease him while she spoke. "I have complaints about some plot holes that I'd really like filled."

"Mm," he hummed as he kissed along her shoulders and neck, moving aside her hair as he did so.

Savannah rolled her eyes and threw a hand up against the shower wall, her focus on the water that rained down on the both of them.

"I read up on the other Soldiers they had in Siberia," she continued. "We'd be unstoppable if we utilized all of those men. All of those... weapons. It'd be... beautiful."

"Too hard to control." Brock sighed and pulled Savannah closer to him by her hips and tried to turn her head toward him. She didn't budge.

"Really." She thought on it for a moment, completely removed from whatever he thought he was doing to seduce or arouse her. "Too hard to control how?"

"Unstable," Brock murmured. He ran his hands down each side of her body and tried again to kiss her. Savannah turned her head the opposite direction. "C'mon."

"Unstable in what way? Not even the acclaimed Alexander Pierce could get them under control?"

Finally, Brock dropped his hands to his sides with a smack and stepped away from her.

"They were too strong, too unpredictable." He turned and left the shower stall to throw a towel around his waist. "Barnes was the only one who cooperated. We always guessed it was because he had the least to lose. He was a POW, a guinea pig for Zola. Everyone else volunteered and then tried to bite the hand that gave them the serum."

Savannah ruminated on that for a moment, allowing the water to run over her face and into her eyes.

She had known all of that already, but something still felt off; HYDRA should have been trying harder to get as much power as they could.

"If we can't handle a few super soldiers, how can we expect to rule the world?"

She heard Brock scoff from the other side of the glass and turned to see him pulling a tight black t-shirt over his head.

"You've seen what it takes to  _handle_  Barnes. You really think we have the resources to do that, times six? I think no." He shook his head and ran a handful of product through his hair. "You done yet? Pierce is expecting us by eight."

Savannah sighed and shut off the water, her dripping hair still hanging in her face.

"Also, it's not about world domination. We've been over this so many times, Savannah. It's—"

"Pushing society to a tipping point until they feel like they have nothing left but HYDRA for guidance and support and control. Got it, thank you," she said as she stepped out of the shower and rung her hair out in a towel. "It just seems like a wasted opportunity."

"I don't expect you to understand," Brock said dismissively. His eyes ran over her entire body. "I have been at this a lot longer. I know you think you're familiar with all of it—"

"I  _am_  familiar with all of it. Just because I haven't lived it doesn't mean I know any less than you. I still think it's a wasted opportunity."

"Look, we hardly have the resources to handle one fucking Soldier. We struggle with that." He turned to face her, a hard look in his eyes. "Especially when some of our best men on the handling team keep dropping dead."

Savannah rolled her eyes and finished drying the rest of her body. She reached for her clothes and pulled them on as slowly as she could manage. Brock had resorted to literally tapping his foot, but he didn't rush her along any more than that.

"They wouldn't be dropping dead if they didn't get in my way."

Brock huffed and left the locker room without looking back at her. It wasn't until they were walking side by side that he spoke again.

"They're used to protocol. Order. Fucking... some semblance of  _sanity_. There's a regime. There's—"

"Okay, try not to bust a nut talking about HYDRA's fucking rules and protocols."

Savannah tossed her damp hair into a loose ponytail and shoved her hands in her pockets.

"Wouldn't have to if you had just—"

Savannah cut in front of him to open one of the doors that led to the Containment hall. She remained in front of him until they reached the enormous bolted door. This time, he didn't bother briefing her on protocol.

The door swung open into the sterile room of agents, and they parted immediately. Alexander Pierce stood a few feet from the Asset, hands folded behind his back as usual.

"Late," he said quietly. His eyes rested only on Rumlow. "Again."

Brock opened his mouth and started to get out a dry comment, but Savannah beat him there.

"Sorry, Rumlow was trying to get his dick wet." She flipped her ponytail over one shoulder and shrugged, her eyes fixed on the Asset. "Again."

In any kind of normal situation, comments like that may be met with a room full of laughter. However, all of their colleagues already knew about the strange on-and-off relationship Agents Rumlow and King seemed to have. They were all unsettled by it, it seemed. All except Pierce.

"What are we doing here?" Brock asked, stepping between Savannah and Alexander. "Are you finally going to fucking wipe him?"

"We wiped him after Agent King's... introduction," an agent standing beside the Asset murmured.

"Yeah? I thought we agreed no less than every day was the only way this was going to work. Why is this so hard for you people to get through your—"

"Enough," Pierce said, his back turned to Rumlow. He only waited a few beats before he started lazily pacing the floor. "We're constructing a timeline."

"A timeline?" Savannah crossed her arms and took half a step toward Pierce, excitement beginning to flow through her veins. "What kind of timeline?"

Alexander turned back toward and offered what passed as a smile on his wrinkled face. "A timeline of events, tragedies, terror, national emergencies, the like."

There was a bit of rustling around the room, undoubtedly the sound of discomfort among the cowardly agents that surrounded Savannah. She narrowed her focus on Alexander, completely captured by what he was saying.

"Our cause is one that's thought out, methodical. It's of utmost importance that we act with caution and don't give ourselves away to S.H.I.E.L.D. or anyone else."

Savannah glanced at the embroidered emblem on the sleeve of her t-shirt. It felt like a stain, and it littered most of the clothes she owned. In the years after her initiation into HYDRA, she had been itching to rid herself of the S.H.I.E.L.D. identification badges, the tainted clothing, the inferior status that made her a slave to Nick Fury.

Alexander Pierce was the one that would set them free. She had believed that wholeheartedly for quite some time. All of her research into the one they called the Winter Soldier had only solidified that belief.

Savannah believed in HYDRA, and she believed most of all in their prized possession.

"The Asset has already been diligently chipping away at the foundations of society. We've put him to good work, as did the ones that came before us." Pierce paused to look around the room, to ensure he had everyone's attention. "He has single-handedly pushed our world toward the edge. And just before its collapse, he has managed to pull us back. Our strategy has been beautifully successful. We're so close."

Savannah wrung her hands together, her heart rate beginning to pick up. Her focused moved away from Pierce and to the Asset. His bare chest was rising and falling almost in time with hers. He was listening, always.

They were so stupid, all of them. They couldn't read him, couldn't understand him the way she could.

"These coming years will be crucial. Society will be pushed to its furthest limits. The final tipping point." Pierce turned back toward the room of agents, his arms spread wide. Savannah kept her eyes on the Asset, a smile crawling across her face. "We've taken presidents, mercenaries, diplomats, schoolchildren..."

"Sir," one of the agents dressed in white remarked. She was standing beside the Asset, examining all the screens and monitors that read his vitals. Alexander turned on his heel, red-faced. Everyone but Savannah took a step back. "I'm sorry I—"

She motioned to the monitors, as if anyone but the med team understood what they were saying.

The metal restraints holding the Asset down to the chair began to groan, though he wasn't exerting any obvious effort.

"He's—He's approaching instability. I think it would be best to put him back under while—"

"No," Pierce marched across the room and stood practically between the Asset's knees. The Asset looked up at Pierce with bleak, cold eyes. The same blank expression he sported most of the time. Savannah felt like she was the only one who recognized the slight furrow in his brow that indicated a violent episode on the brink of exploding. Pierce lowered his chin and looked into the Asset's face. "Whatever you're playing at, you can forget it. I will put your brain back in that blender every goddamn hour if I have to."

Much to even Savannah's surprise, the Asset jerked against his restraints. A show of rebellion, though he had proved time and time again that he was more than capable of breaking free.

Without hesitation, Pierce pulled a handgun from its holster and pressed the barrel to the Asset's forehead. Somehow, the room fell even more silent that it had been before.

"Fine. Forget the blender. We'll do it this way."

Savannah had to step around another agent to get a clear view of Pierce's weapon. It didn't make sense of him to a pull a pistol on the Asset. Not after all that talk of how valuable he was to their cause.

Upon closer inspection, Savannah realized the Alexander's weapon wasn't a pistol at all, not even a handgun. It was some kind of taser. Her eyes widened, a smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth.

The Asset raised his chin and set his trembling jaw. He jerked once more against his vibranium restraints, but this time, he spoke.

"Do it."

A chill ran across Savannah's skin. It was the first time she had heard the gravelly, broken voice in person. Her smile grew, her focus sharpened. Alexander let out a cold chuckle, and his finger moved for the trigger on his device.

Savannah moved across the room. The Asset saw her before Pierce did. She drew her own weapon and delivered a blow to the back of Alexander's head with the butt of her pistol. A nonfatal one, not that it mattered much to her.

Before he even hit the ground, she had traded her gun for the one Pierce had held before. She turned it over a few times in her hands before taking his place in front of the Asset. They stared at each other for a moment and blood pulsed in her ears.

"Who the hell are you?"

Savannah had never heard him string together more than a few words at once. Usually he was so subdued, so broken, that his mind couldn't register more than a few orders.

Pierce, who was just then beginning to come to and roll over. Another agent tried to help him to his feet and disarm Savannah at the same time, but she was already engaged. She pressed the device to the Asset's temple the way she had seen Pierce press it to his forehead.

"I told you the first time we met," she said, her voice cool. "My name is Savannah King. It's an honor, Sergeant Barnes."

With a sinister smile, she pulled the trigger. 


	7. 06.

  **April 6, 2014.**

**S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters.**

**Triskelion Building, Washington, D.C.**

 

"Pierce is down."

A chill ran across Savannah's skin. She stopped in her tracks and turned her head, even though the voice was coming through her earpiece. People continued to push past her through the hallway, fleeing. She wiped her forehead and moved to the wall, trying to steady herself. As if today hadn't been enough trouble already. As if it could get any fucking worse.

Her ears were ringing and her legs felt like they might give out. What felt like whole minutes later, she finally managed to respond.

" _What_?"

"Pierce. Pierce is—He's dead, King. Fury is—"

The man's shaking voice cut off with an abrupt choking sound and Savannah slammed her open palm against the cold, cement wall.

"God dammit!"

No one stopped to see if she was all right. A few people met her eye, the few HYDRA agents that were left. The few that had been smart enough to keep themselves hidden when the shooting started. She knew it wouldn't last long.

Eventually, they would have to fight for their cause, especially if Alexander Pierce had been slain by Nick Fury. HYDRA would have to come pouring out of the woodwork, but there was no way they could overwhelm S.H.I.E.L.D., not now. It was supposed to be the perfect time, their perfect plan. And it had failed so completely. The Insight helicarriers were crashing in the Potomac and there was nothing to be done but self-preserve or die trying.

Static cut through on comms again, another terrified voice of one of her colleagues.

"Romanoff and Fury are approaching—" The woman's voice cut out for a moment. "—wing. Do not engage. I repeat, do not—"

Her voice dropped off, too. Savannah didn't know if it was a bad connection or if she had met her end. Truthfully, it didn't matter to her.

What she cared about the most was finding the Asset and getting him back under control.

The last orders they'd administered were to pursue Rogers at any cost. She didn't know for certain how long he'd last, given the ordeal after meeting him on the bridge.

Savannah pushed on, shouldering through a mix of her colleagues still camouflaged as the enemy and genuine S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. She hadn't heard where exactly Romanoff and Fury were headed, but she planned on engaging and taking them down. She'd had enough. If no one else was going to try to hold HYDRA together, Savannah King would do it herself.

She and the group of agents she had been tailing barely made it to the ground floor before the entire building lurched. Everyone cried out and ducked instinctively, even Savannah. Her eyes darted around the room, trying to take in all the information she could.

Her feet never stopped moving toward the front door. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach that she couldn't quite shake, a feeling of impending doom that only a few other sensible people seemed to share with her. Many had fallen to their knees, hands clasped behind their heads. As if that would save them from the collapse of a fifty-story building.

Almost as the thought passed through her mind and as she stepped out into the scorching light of day, her lungs were consumed with dust.

She, among others, dared a glance skyward. Savannah's breath stuck in her throat. The dust and debris burned her eyes as the helicarrier cut through the side of the Triskelion like a warm knife through butter.

"No," she uttered, still taking steps stumbling steps backward. Someone grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away, but she tore out of their grasp to press a shaking finger to her earpiece. "Does anyone have tabs on Rumlow?"

She was met with static. A few broken-up voices, a few screams. A sick feeling of dread crept up the back of her throat.

Everyone was dead. HYDRA really was going to fall alongside S.H.I.E.L.D., and it was really going to be over. Without Pierce, without Rumlow, it would be hard to scrape up the survivors and motivate them.

Without them, Savannah wasn't sure what would happen to the Asset. She didn't know where he was, if he'd managed to kill Steve Rogers, or if he himself had been killed. That was the hardest thing to swallow.

Nevertheless, she turned her back on the collapsing Triskelion and tucked her face into the crook of her arm. A few paramedics descended on her and strapped her into a gas mask and whisked her out of harm's way.

As she watched the three helicarriers come to rest in the Potomac River from a medical helicopter, she tried to come to terms with all the uncertainty of HYDRA's future. Just as the panic was seeping in, something caught Savannah's eye.

She jerked away from the paramedic that was tending to her minor wounds and nearly pressed her face against the window. For a moment, she thought she might have been hallucinating.

The helicopter was too far away to be completely certain, but the red-white-and-blue uniform stood out like a sore thumb against the gray landscape of smoke and dust. Savannah was sure that she had seen Steve Rogers plummet from the last crashing helicarrier. A new burst of adrenaline rushed through her.

The Asset was alive. He had taken out Captain America. He'd fulfilled his mission and would need to be extracted as soon as possible. Savannah eyed the handful of paramedics that surrounded her and stealthily ran her hand over her sidearm.

There were plenty of things to be scared of in that moment, plenty of uncertainty and every reason to believe it was all over. But Savannah King had faith in the Winter Soldier, and she knew with the death of Steve Rogers, HYDRA may be equipped to rise again, sooner than expected. They'd have to act quickly in order to maintain the element of surprise, which would be significantly more difficult without their Director.

Savannah narrowed her gaze on the largest paramedic sitting across from her, slender fingers wrapped around her firearm. The Asset needed extraction. No one else knew he was still alive and she doubted anyone who cared was still breathing.

A wave of calm washed over her. The calm before the storm. It was then that she knew.

It was up to her. 


	8. 07.

**July 3, 2014.**

**Abandoned Warehouse.**

**Brooklyn, New York.**

 

 

Bucky pried himself off the cool cement floor with a quiet groan. The sheen of grime and cold sweat across his entire body made him shiver. He turned his head minimally from side to side, still waking up from the scarce sleep he'd found that afternoon.

It was dark outside. The only light was what leaked through the broken windows close to the high ceiling. He was puzzled, unsure of what had awakened him. He didn't remember dreaming, but then again, he rarely did. When the dreams came, they were vivid and full-force. However, by the time he opened his eyes and pawed a piece of paper from his bag, they were usually gone, just wisps of dust in the wind. Less than a memory.

He startled at the sound of a cracking explosion and jumped to his feet, muscles tense and nerves fried. In a flash of pointless embarrassment, he looking up and saw the remnants of colored sparks fading into the night sky.

_Fireworks._

Something seemed to tickle the back of his head, no—the back of his  _brain_. A tingling sensation that he could never pin down in words, not matter how many times he tried.

A shiver ran across his sweaty skin despite the humidity. He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around himself, trying to focus. A flash of color across the backs of his eyelids nearly sent him reeling off his feet.

_Red, white, and blue. American flags, cheering, a warm embrace, a cool drink. Music, jazz..._

He tried to zero in on the fragment of a memory. With a sharp gasp, all he came up with was the crystal-clear imagery of war, gunfire, and assassinations as more fireworks went off outside.

Bucky kicked his backpack with a short grunt.

The last three months had come and gone in a miserable blur of fear, exhaustion, and self-preservation. All he wanted was a piece of himself. Just one memory of his own. Just  _one_ that completely belonged to him.

To Bucky Barnes, not the Winter Soldier.

He slowly lowered himself back down to the floor and pulled the limp backpack into his lap. One of the tattered notebooks that he'd thrown in there weeks ago slid out. Mindlessly, he flipped through the flimsy pages. There wasn't much there. He'd been getting so irritated lately that he was beginning to feel like trying to write things down was useless.

All he had were pieces of names, incomplete words, and vague descriptions of places he thought he was remembering. It was exhausting to try to piece together the things in his head and then try to decide what was real and what had been put there by someone else.

Fireworks were still going off, but Bucky tried to ignore them as he ran his fingers over his own half-cursive handwriting. The words looked as if they had been written all at once, but he remembered clearly how long it had taken him to get down a simple sentence.

_Water._

_Bridge. The man on the bridge. I knew him._

Bucky shook the memory out of his head the same way he did when he'd written it down. He could still feel the sting of Pierce's blows on his face, the electricity coursing through his body. Things were spotty after that.

_The man on the bridge. A bridge._

_Water._

_A brook? A bridge over a brook?_

_The man on the bridge. The bridge over_

_Bridge. Brook. Bridge._

The words ran together until they were halfway down the page, most of them scribbled over and crossed out. Bucky remember throwing the notebook aside and taking a break for an hour, his eyes starting to feel like they might fall out of their sockets.

His eyes trailed to the bottom of the page, something like a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

Four words written in perfect print. He'd taken his time. It wasn't rushed like everything above it, trying to get it down before it disappeared. No, this had stuck with him. It still did.

_Brooklyn Bridge._

_Brooklyn, New York._

It was the last thing he had written in two weeks, which was how long it had taken him to find a covert way to get to New York. Initially, after leaving DC, his plan had been to head west, as far as he could go. Somehow he just knew that in that general direction, he could get out of HYDRA's reach.

He was squatting in Arkansas, waiting for sundown, trying to meditate the Winter Soldier out of his mind. It never worked, but sometimes he could grasp memories, the real ones. Just pieces.

It was with a jolt that a vision of blue water, a city skyline, and a magnificent bridge came to him. By the time he opened his eyes, it was fading. And by the time he could grab a pen and paper, it was all but gone. He spent a day and a half trying to get it back, and finally he had ended up with a name.

He had felt drawn there, like it was somewhere he was supposed to go.

_Go back to._

The thought scared him, but it kept coming back to him.

He'd been to New York before, more times than he probably even knew, on various types of HYDRA business. Usually in the back of a van, restrained. More often than that, he woke up there out of a cryosleep.

This was different, whatever memory he was grasping at. He had come back to Brooklyn...  _returned there._ Like it was somewhere he belonged. If he knew what it felt like, he almost thought he could describe as...

Bucky's train of thought stop there, his back immediately straightening. Before he thought about doing it, his hands were shoving his few belongings back into his backpack. He threw it over his shoulders and stood, still not sure why he felt the need to.

His eyes scanned the darkened warehouse, the fireworks outside going off at a more steady pace.

 _Movement._ He'd heard movement, or sensed it, before his mind had even fully caught up to itself.

"God dammit," he murmured, drawing the pistol from the back of his pants.

He tried to slow his breathing, but his chest continued to heave. He had become careless with checking rooftops, dark corners, and watching his back. For some reason, he'd started to believe that three months was enough.

It would never be enough.

He couldn't think, he didn't know  _what_ to think. Was he surrounded? Was it a single agent, a handful? Could he take them out if he stood his ground?

Bucky started to move forward, but his next train of thought stopped him cold, and he began to wonder.

What if it was a single agent? Just one. He wasn't worried about any of them. Anyone that had survived the fall of HYDRA, he could take out. They would have been the agents that weren't targeted by S.H.I.E.L.D. or the government because they weren't seen as a threat. The ones who were too afraid to truly stand up for the "cause" in the face of serious legal implications.

Bucky nodded to himself, trying to reinforce the thought that he knew he could take any and all of them, especially if they thought they had the element of surprise.

All except one.

With a trembling breath, Bucky turned his head to the darkened corner behind him.

Nothing.

He glanced at the windows above him.

Nothing.

But he was so far inside his own head that he was convinced he could smell her perfume, hear her voice, a faint whisper.

A mouse skittered beneath his feet and he jumped, but immediately settled back. The fireworks were working up to a finale. Though he was uneasy and unsure of whether or not he was actually being watched or followed, he knew now would be the time to move. His near-silent movement would be muffled by the explosions over the East River, and he could make a getaway.

He'd stayed in Brooklyn too long, nearly a week. It was a stupid decision and a mistake he wouldn't have made if there wasn't something tugging at his insides. But it was time. As he slipped away into the night, he knew that it wasn't just in Brooklyn he'd stayed in too long.

Bucky had caught glimpses of shadows following him over the past months, glimmers of firearms on the waists of passing strangers. They were catching on and they had been for a while. He knew there couldn't be many of them left, but he also knew she had the power to get her hands on the resources she would need. Even if that meant disposable recruits that had been indoctrinated off the streets of small towns in the deep South.

He wouldn't let them close in on him. He wouldn't let  _her_  close enough to try anything she had up her sleeve.

She was reason enough to flee the North American continent, even if it meant he'd be killed by someone else along the way.

Bucky didn't know much about himself. He couldn't remember some of the most important things that would have made it easier to survive on the run. But he knew enough. He had enough memories of HYDRA, of torture, of death and destruction, to last him a lifetime.

It was enough to keep him running. Enough to keep him out of Savannah King's grip.

And so he ran. 


	9. 08.

**July 4, 2014.**

**Brooklyn, New York.**

 

Savannah jumped in the back of the van and settled in beside the few colleagues she had wrangled together in the past few weeks. They all looked at her as if she held every answer to any question. With a smirk, she laid out a map between them and silently, she pointed a finger to a seemingly empty space along the East River.

"Okay, and?"

She looked up at the man who had spoken. His rifle lay across his lap, twinkling in the fading light. She smiled wider and settled back against the wall of the vehicle.

"That's where we'll find him," she said, which brought raised eyebrows all around. "I've been scouring, searching, and doing a hell of a lot of thinking and analyzing. It's an obvious pick. Removed, quiet, and more importantly, abandoned."

"How do you know that?" The woman sitting beside her asked. "I mean, really. How can we know anything for sure?"

Savannah sat forward again and folded the map. She leveled her gaze at the three men sitting across from her.

"This is our best bet. The time frame is flawless. Any fireworks within a three-mile radius with mask any trouble we run into." She moved her hair over one shoulder and slid toward the back of the van. "That's not permission to get trigger-happy. I'd bet he's been waiting on extraction for the past three months. But he knows how to hide and he knows how to remain undetected."

"Unfortunately for him, we're the ones who taught him that," Savannah said as she pushed herself onto the sidewalk and brushed off her clothes. She crossed her arms and made eye contact with each of the six agents, their full attention on her. "The goal is to bring him in alive. Expect resistance, but don't shoot first. I'll handle any disobedience."

They nodded intermittently. She glanced at the setting sun and smiled, raising two fingers to her temple with a nod. The six agents straightened their backs and nodded at her, their response coming in an eerie, unanimous whisper.

"Hail HYDRA."

**——**

Savannah plucked the empty piece of notebook paper from the ground and crushed it in her free hand. The other held one of her pistol, which she reluctantly tucked back into its holster. Her blood boiled as the agents surrounded her and stared blankly, waiting for orders or an explanation. She was still trying to figure out that last part for herself.

"We're getting closer," she muttered, squeezing down harder on the ball of paper. "He was here. No doubt. But we've already raked this entire premise clean."

"So you were wrong," said the woman who had questioned her earlier in the day with a dismissive scoff. Savannah thought her name was Alina. "You were wrong  _again_ , Savannah. This is getting ridiculous."

Savannah turned her body to the shorter woman, who had abandoned her helmet and offensive posture. It'd be too easy to take her out, right there. She held back for the moment, if for no other reason than the woman had been tremendously useful in the past weeks, in every aspect.

"Not wrong. Miscalculated. He's only half a step ahead, which is more than we've been able to say for the past three months." She tossed the paper to the ground with a grimace. "But that means he knows. He's noticed. Which means two things for us."

"And what the hell are those two things?" One of the men sighed as he unzipped his kevlar jacket, revealing a plain white t-shirt beneath. "Malveux is right, this is fucking exhausting. And ridiculous. You're not going to get ahead of him. It's better to let him keep running and let the Feds get ahold of him. They'll take care of him real quick and we won't have to play these stupid games anymore."

Savannah cracked a smile and turned her face toward the windows. One set of fireworks was coming to a finale over the East River, but there were more that would likely last for most of the night.

"For one, it means we have to be more careful."

She pulled her firearm from its holster and fired a single shot into the man's abdomen in a fluid motion. The other agents cried out and took several steps back as their colleague folded to the floor and black liquid stained the white fabric of his shirt.

Savannah cocked her gun and pressed it to the top of his head as he writhed and groaned on his knees, gasping for breath below her.

"It also means the rest of us are going on a trip to Europe. Unfortunately, I just don't think you're fit to travel."

One of the other men retched the moment she pulled the trigger, but Alina and the others remained cold-faced and clutching their own weapons.

Savannah wiped the barrel of her gun on her jeans and replaced it in its holster, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. After they all stood silently for several minutes and watched the blood ooze onto the concrete from their fallen agent, Savannah looked at each of them and crossed her arms.

"Well, you heard me. We're off on a European retreat. Time to get packing."


	10. 09.

**August 14, 2015**

**Undercover HYDRA Base.**

**Berlin, Germany.**

 

Savannah gazed out at the city as she nursed her second cup of coffee. Her cell phone rested on the railing of the balcony as she tapped away at the keyboard with her index finger. Before she hit send, her ringtone went off. She picked up without giving the caller ID a second glance. She opened her mouth to speak, only to find herself cut off. 

“I can’t talk long,” Alina said. Her voice was soft, subdued. Savannah could almost imagine her crouched in a broom closet somewhere in a S.H.I.E.L.D. base, tucked away to make a phone call. “I haven’t heard anything. There hasn’t been much talk at all. I think most of them don’t believe HYDRA is operational.”

Savannah sighed and leaned heavily on the railing, her long hair spilling over one shoulder. She sipped her coffee and waited for more.

 “Are there more of you out there?” Alina asked.

 “Sixty.” Savannah glanced down at the street below her. They hadn’t had to worry about surveillance in a while, but there was no such thing as being too safe. She and her colleagues had never expected to run into as many displaced agents as they had, and there were still more coming. “We’re at a hotel in Berlin. It’s slow work. We can’t do it all at once or it’d draw attention.”

 “Oh…” Alina cleared her throat. “Uh, wow.”

 “Turns out Barnes wasn’t the only one who left. We keep finding more.”

 Alina went silent for a moment and Savannah glanced down at her phone to check if the call had dropped; it hadn’t.

“Malveaux?”

“I’m here. Sorry.” There was some shuffling on the other end of the line. When she spoke again, her voice was even softer. “Sorry, someone walked by. I should go. International calls are expensive as hell.”

 “No kidding,” Savannah said. She turned back toward her empty hotel room and finished off her coffee. “Keep me updated.”

 “Always do.”

 Savannah tucked her phone into her pocket and slid back inside her stuffy hotel room. It was still early, the sun having risen over the city just a half hour before. She assumed no one else was awake yet. No one had come to see her yet that morning.  

 Things had been relatively quiet since coming to Europe. Much of what they were up to last summer had since slowed. Leads on the Asset went relatively cold by the end of March and Alina was their only chance at picking up his trail again.

 In April, she volunteered to return to S.H.I.E.L.D. as a double agent, the same job she’d occupied before the fall. She’d been there ever since, feeding Savannah intel from the inside.

 It was weeks like the last few that Savannah almost wished she still had Alina there with her. She was perfectly capable of leading the new mass of subversives they’d found scattered throughout Europe on her own, but it was still easier to do with a second in command. Although Savannah was reluctant to even call Alina that, she had felt her absence in the past few months.

 A knock came at the door as Savannah tired her hair in a knot at the top of her head.

 “Yeah,” she said, tucking a pistol into the back of her jeans.

 The door slid open to reveal a man and woman. She wasn’t entirely familiar with either of them.

 The man was new, but that was all she was aware of. It was likely he hadn’t even told her his name upon arrival. The woman, however, was one of the ones who had come with her since New York. Her light hair was tightly braided and slung over over one shoulder. A sheen of sweat sparkled on both of their foreheads.

 “What’s the matter?” Savannah took a few steps across the room. They still hadn’t quite crossed the threshold. “Has someone been made?”

 “No, that’s not it at all,” the man said slowly. “The takeover has been coming along well. Like you said, the long game—”

 “Then what’s the problem?”

 The woman moved closer to Savannah, her arms crossed. “There’s been… some whispering. Some things I think even Malveaux and S.H.I.E.L.D. have heard about yet.”

 Savannah took another step forward, mirroring the agent’s defensive posture. “Spit it out, then. If it’s so important—”

 “It is.” The woman glanced at the man who was practically cowering behind her. “I’m just not sure whose ears you’d like listening in.”

 “All right.” Savannah lifted her chin in understanding and locked eye with the man for a brief moment. “Get out. Fall in later.”

“Hail HYDRA,” he muttered under his breath as he turned and left the room without any protest. 

The woman that stood before Savannah looked like she was feigning off an eye roll as she turned and closed the door.

“Some of the new ones,” she began with a shake of her head. “Some of them have been talking, mumbling about Rumlow.

Savannah’s breath hitched in her throat. Her mind went completely blank for a short moment before her thoughts began to spiral. She couldn’t help but back up until her thighs hit the bed frame and she slowly lowered herself to the mattress.

She had been alone all this time, nearly two years. Of course, she could handle the agents and herself just fine, but getting ahold of the Asset when they found him was always a concern. She spent many afternoons wishing that Pierce hadn’t gotten himself killed. Even if she preferred him dead, many of her subordinates responded exceptionally well to him. He had established such fear in such large number of people that he didn’t even have to exert effort in order to lead.

Brock Rumlow had the same traits, the same potential. Most importantly, the same control over the Asset. The three of them had turned him into such a moldable work of art since Savannah's joining. She had faith in her individual power, but even if she could have _one_ of them back… 

She’d much prefer it to be Rumlow. Pierce was old, but he’d had his ways. There had been multiple occasions when he had to put Savannah back in her place. The time she didn’t spend working with the Asset or keeping Brock under control was spent plotting Pierce’s assassination or abdication. His death, though it sent shockwaves through the ashes of HYDRA, was for the best.

Savannah had control over Brock Rumlow. Power. Of course, he seemed to think it was the other way around. But maybe it worked both ways. It didn’t matter. If he was _alive_ —

“What?” When she finally found her voice, it came out in a whisper. “What about him? What could—”

 “He’s alive, Savannah. He’s been rounding up agents the same way we have.” She paused and ran a hand over her forehead. “Well, not quite the same way.”

 “What do you mean?”

The woman shifted slightly and crossed her arms again. “He’s been taking a lot of them out. He lures them in with weapons and stolen tech and then…” She motioned vaguely and went on. “Hundreds of them are dead already. No one knows why.”

 Savannah shook her head.

 “That doesn’t seem right.” Brock had always been dedicated to HYDRA and their cause. For a while, it felt like he and Savannah were the only thing that kept it running. “Where are they getting their information?”

 “I don’t know. It’s hard to find anything out right now. For the past few months, really. The whole Ultron thing really forced everyone underground. A lot of them are unwilling to do anything but talk amongst themselves, within whatever groups they came in.” She paused for a moment and then exhaled heavily. “There’s more. A few have said he’s coming here, looking for us. Looking for you.”

 Savannah nodded absently and wrung her hands together. She’d been waiting for that piece of information. Hoped for it, even. A wave of something she didn’t want to call excitement washed over her.

 Anxiety? Fear? What did she have to be afraid of?

 She shook her head and glanced at the woman before she continued staring blankly at the TV screen across the room.

 “King… What do we do?”

 “Two things,” Savannah said quietly. “First, get as much intel as you can. Find out if he’s really heading this way. We’ll want to give him a warm welcome. Anyone who won’t talk, send them here.”

 The agent nodded as Savannah met her light eyes again. “Second, send down orders to start eliminating another batch of hotel staff and visitors.”

 A sheen of sweat was starting to form on every inch of her skin. It made her itch. The woman was standing by, waiting for more specifications.

 “Securing this place is taking too damn long. We can’t afford killing one and two people at a time. Tell them to get as many as they can. Do it quietly. Raise no alarms but be fucking diligent, for Christ’s sake. Janitorial staff, housekeeping, people on the upper floors first. Work your way down.”

 She pushed herself off the bed and straightened her back, trying to remember who the hell she was.

 “Do I make myself clear?”

 “Yes, Agent King.” The woman said with a short salute. As she moved for the door, she turned her chin back to Savannah. “Hail HYDRA.”

 Savannah ground her teeth together as the door at closed silently. She glanced at the mirror above the dresser, hardly recognizing the flushed, sweaty face that met her there.

 “Yes,” she said, her voice a shaking whisper. “They will.”

 


	11. 10.

**September 25, 2015.**

**Geneva, Switzerland.**

 

Bucky took a sharp left and nearly lost his balance as he propelled himself down another darkened, narrow alley. Usually he had more stamina, but he had been running in a full sprint for over an hour; it was starting to wear him down.  
  
The most important thing was staying out from under the street lights. Even with long sleeves on, the yellow bulbs tended to glint off his metal hand like a flashing neon sign for anyone pursuing him. He'd dropped his gloves at some point during his travels through Eastern Austria, and there hadn't been time to find another pair.  
  
It was a small thing, yes, but he had found in recent months that the mere existence of his bionic appendage had made it that much easier for him to be found out.  
  
Bucky cursed as he tripped over his own feet. He almost fell and had to brace himself with his left arm before he collided with the wet pavement. He never stopped moving.  
  
Grease, sweat, and grime coated his entire body, slicked his hair back beneath the hood of his sweatshirt. He'd lost track of the last time he'd been able to bathe. With a shake of his head, he tried to put that thought of his mind. There were more important things. Currently, his life, for example.  
  
It was impossible to know where exactly they had picked up his trail. He’d known they would eventually. He hadn't been certain about being followed when he was back in New York, but since coming to Europe, things had changed. Shadowy figures on street corners and rooftops had become more than just a point of Bucky's paranoia.  
  
It was in Germany that he started noticing the gleam of a handgun beneath a long coat as he passed someone on the street, or someone with a pair of binoculars on a rooftop that disappeared before he could investigate. People who were supposed to be passing strangers were faces he suddenly recognized. It had taken him longer to realize than he was willing to admit to himself.

The realization came while he was quickly combing through a Munich street market and brushed shoulders with a man he had nearly collided with on the street in Berlin just two days before. After that, he realized there were more. Two women and at least one more man. Probably more.

But no sign of _her._  
  
It didn't matter. Bucky didn't have time to waste. He had to think on his feet, and all he could hope was that he could keep enough distance between them to throw them off.

He wanted his path toward Italy to be as obvious as he could manage without actually having to go there. If he could get them hung up on the idea that he'd cornered himself on the peninsula, he could buy himself some time.  
  
They were too close. A half mile behind him. He was running out of dark alleys to turn down.

He didn't know how many there were, if they would surround him and cut him off at his next turn.

All he could do was keep running.  
  
Maybe it was a mistake, drawing them out like this. Maybe—  
  
Bucky turned down another alley and skidded to a halt. Dead end. He tried to get a deep breath in between the labored, broken ones puffing out of his mouth. He didn't quite get there, but he had no choice but to turn back and find another way.  
  
Minutes later, his heart skipped a beat and immediately started to pound harder. There were footfalls behind him, heavy shoes hitting the cement at a steady pace. He could hear them gaining on him.  
  
_No._  
  
"King, I've got him! Northwest corner!"  
  
A wave of nausea washed over him, so intense that he almost had to stop.  
  
_No._  
  
Bucky was mid-step when a shock of intense heat went screaming down his right leg. He hadn’t even heard the shot.

As he stumbled and instinctively grabbed at the inflicted area; his human hand came down on the hot liquid running down his thigh. He stopped moving, half-stunned and half-horrified. He drew in a sharp breath started toward the brick wall to his left, his hand outstretched.  
  
He heard a muffled second shot ring out between the two brick structures. He turned his body, both to get out of the path of the bullet and to see why the shot sounded so strange. A silencer. They’d come prepared.

Bucky was facing his assailant by the time the bullet hit him on the lower left side of his abdomen.  
  
He took several stumbling steps backward, grinding his teeth together. The man was older, but not someone he was sure he recognized. He was speaking in a language that Bucky knew he should've recognized, too, but his pulse in his ears and the heat coursing through his lower body blocked out anything else.  
  
He managed to turn away and make his way to the next turn, another alley. The same alley. A dead end.

He scanned desperately for a way out. There was a fire escape. He tried to run, but could only manage an unbalanced jog as he pressed his hand into the hole in his stomach. He'd have to jump to reach the first step. If he could just—  
  
Another shot rang out, this time from a weapon without a silencer. Bucky braced for impact, unsure if he could withstand another bullet wound. Sure, his super soldier body would survive, but if he wasn't strong enough to fight off a handful of HYDRA subversives…  
  
The third bullet never came. There were voices echoing down the alley behind him.    
Around him? Ahead of him? He was starting to fade.  
  
He turned around slowly, leaning heavily on the wall beside him. This time, his heart skipped more than just one beat. He was sure it had stopped completely.  
  
Savannah King emerged from the mouth of the alley. She tucked her pistol back into its holster and stepped over the body of the man she had just shot dead. She didn't come further than that.  
  
Neither of them said anything. She didn't have to. Bucky wasn't sure it would have mattered if she did. He couldn't hear much more than his own pulse and labored breathing.

There was a strange type of vibrating sensation at the back of his skull. His vision was starting to go, but he wasn't sure it was from the blood loss. He'd been shot before, and what he was feeling now wasn't like the other times.  
  
The lack of vision was soon replaced with vivid, violent flashbacks. It was all coming back to him at once. He could practically feel the electricity coursing through him, the blows to his head, hear the screaming.

He tore his eyes away from Savannah and the shadow that was approaching behind her. They had him. God damn it, they had him. All his effort had come down to bleeding out in a dark alley in Switzerland, trying to outsmart them.  
  
She still hadn't moved or spoken. She knew it was the end, too.  
  
A man's voice came bounding off the bricks. The urgency lit a spark of hope inside of Bucky. He glanced back at the fire escape he'd been targeting earlier.  
  
"King! We've got company."  
  
Rumlow . Bucky shivered. He couldn't see his face, but the very shape of him looked larger, more oppressive than he remembered.

"We've gotta get out of here. If you plan on taking the Asset with us, make him easy to transport and do it quickly. We don't have time for this."  
  
Savannah turned her body away from Bucky.

He wouldn't get another chance. He took as many steps backward as quickly and as silently as he could. By the time Rumlow called out and Savannah turned back around, Bucky had clattered onto the fire escape and made his way halfway to the roof.  
  
He flinched as three more gunshots went off. They ricocheted off the brick wall and metal stairs beneath him. None of them made contact. He didn't stop moving.  
  
There were sirens now, coming from seemingly every direction. Blood was still pouring out of him. It could still be the end.  
  
When he reached the roof of the building, he looked down to see Savannah and Rumlow still speaking in close quarters. She kept glancing up in the direction Bucky had disappeared. Her movements made him dizzy.

Somehow he knew that she was thinking about coming after him, despite Rumlow's apparent protests. He still couldn't hear much of what they were actually saying.  
  
Despite the screaming pain in his stomach and right leg, Bucky laid himself flat against the roof and continued to observe. Another set of footfalls echoed down the alley. He turned his head to see a younger boy join Savannah, and Rumlow, chest heaving and face flushed. He was panting, and Bucky almost thought he looked afraid.  
  
Whatever he had to say didn't go over well with Savannah. She gave him a harsh shove and drew her weapon. More footfalls were coming, several sets of them. Rumlow threw a hand across her chest and forced her to take a few steps back.

Bucky finally registered what was different about him. He seemed larger not because he was, but because he was wearing what looked like several extra layers of clothes. Armor, even.

One side of his face was deformed, burned maybe? He ventured to wonder if he'd been inside the Triskelion when it collapsed, and how he'd survived if that was the case.  
  
Bucky didn't get more time to analyze Rumlow or Savannah. More people were coming down the alley and they were gone as quickly as Bucky had disappeared. The younger boy was left standing alone, clearly disoriented at the sudden change.  
  
He glanced around him the same way Bucky had, and the realization that there was nowhere to go was visible as it dawned on him.

  
"Down here!"

A chill ran through Bucky's core. At the sound of that voice, he was suddenly as frozen as the young agent he was watching.  
  
He could hardly even turn his head to look at the three people who entered the dead-end alley and cornered the boy the way Bucky had been trapped just moments ago. A new kind of dizziness washed over him.  
  
"I wouldn't," a woman's voice called out as the young man reached for his weapon. "It really won't be worth it on your part."  
  
She emerged from the shadows and took several steps toward him. Something about her dark clothes and fiery hair was familiar to Bucky, even in the dim light. He couldn't focus on her long enough to pursue the memory. Not with him standing there beside her, his arms crossed and jaw set.

It had been so long. Bucky realized with a start that he’d almost begun to forget again, in light of being pursued by Savannah and her recruits.  
  
The boy reached for his weapon again, but the woman lunged forward and seized him by both arms. He was on the ground before he had time to try anything else.  
  
"Who was here with you?" another man said. Not the one Bucky had been focused on before; not _Steve_ . The one speaking was the one with the wings. Bucky remembered their violent exchanges vividly and regretted them. He was a clearly a friend.  
  
"We already know you're with HYDRA, if that makes it easier." Steve unfolded his arms and crouched beside the boy. "And we're not after you. We're looking for a man named Brock Rumlow. Something tells me you can help us."  
  
"I can't!" The boy cried. The woman leaned forward and dug her knee into the middle of his spine, pulling his arms up at an unnatural angle. "I can't, I swear! I can’t help you! I don't know anything!"  
  
"Oh, no use lying, kid," she said. She gave one of his arms an extra twist. He cried out again, but the three of them hardly blinked. She was an inch away from breaking his arm. Bucky couldn't look away. “Talk and I’ll let you up.”

  
"Fine! Fine, I'll talk!"  
  
The woman stood up, straightened her dark shirt, and flipped her long, red hair over one shoulder.  
  
"Let’s go! We don’t have all night. Bad guys to catch and all."  
  
Bucky watched in horror as the young boy stood, his hand already reaching for his gun in its holster. The three of them didn’t see it until it was too late.

He had already pressed the weapon to his temple by the time they all lurched forward to disarm him. From six stories up, Bucky could tell he'd muttered "Hail HYDRA" under his breath before pulling the trigger.  
  
And even though it was over, he couldn't bring himself to leave. Perhaps it was the fatigue that kept him lying there while Steve's shoulders dropped and he buried his head in his hands.  
  
Savannah and Rumlow were long gone. He had time to lay as flat as he could get against the cold roof of the building as they called for reinforcement.

The young agent's body was taken care of, as well as the body of the other man, the one that had shot Bucky. The other man—Bucky remembered that his name was Sam—left with the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, but Steve stayed behind with the red-haired woman.

A strange feeling that coursed through Bucky as he watched him slide down the brick wall and run his hands through his hair. The woman was speaking to him, and now that Bucky had time to really look at her, even in the dark, her name came back to him as well.

 _Romanoff. Natasha._ He’d run into her before, long before the last time he’d encountered Sam and Steve. Her voice was much softer than it was then, softer than it was when she was dealing with the young agent that had killed himself just minutes before.

“Steve,” she said. She took several steps toward him and lowered herself to his level. She gently laid her hands on his knees. Slowly, Steve lifted his head. “We’ll find him.”

“It’s not about that,” Steve said. His voice was rough and strangely shaky. Bucky found himself leaning over the edge of the building, having momentarily forgotten that he wasn’t just hiding from Savannah and Rumlow. “It’s not—Did you see how young he was? He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.”

“We didn’t kill him. We’re looking for intel on Barnes or Rumlow,” Natasha said. “We were going to take him in. You know that.”

Bucky shrank back from the edge at his name. He had thought hat Steve and his friends might’ve been looking for him, too. He wished they wouldn’t.

“He didn’t. He didn’t know that.” Steve shook his head and leaned forward until his face was between his knees. “This is the closest we’ve been, Nat. Rumlow was _here_. And now…”

“We’ll figure something else out.” Natasha offered her hand to Steve and after a long moment, he took it and allowed her to pull him to his feet. He looked smaller, somehow. Defeated.

Something other than the path of a bullet burned through Bucky’s stomach.

“Right now, we need to get back. Let them know what’s going on,” Natasha said.

“Yeah.” Steve took a few steps forward with a heavy sigh. Bucky’s breath caught when he stopped short and turned his head upward, toward the rooftops.

For a short moment, he thought Steve had looked right at him. Terror shot through him, but not because he thought he’d been found out.

As he lowered his gaze and followed Natasha back out onto the main street, Bucky found himself wishing that Steve _had_ seen him.

 

It was fleeting, but he’d felt it, and it terrified him.

 


	12. 11.

**November 25, 2015.**

**New HYDRA Base.**

**Berlin, Germany.**

 

The plan to clear out and overthrow the Berlin hotel had gone relatively well. There had been minimal resistance. Throughout the process, Savannah's team had even gained a few agents. It still wasn't clear if they had joined for fear of their lives, or if they were genuinely dedicated to the cause. As long as they could contribute, Savannah didn't care.

Brock didn't feel the same way. He was consistently on edge, paranoid that he and Savannah could be betrayed at any moment.

She was comfortable with the risk. She knew that she could handle anyone who tried to cross them. Brock was well-equipped to handle anyone who offered up a challenge. He had new armor, new abilities, and twice the skill he'd had before the Triskelion fell. Savannah didn't understand the problem.

"The problem is that you're being  _reckless_ , King!" Brock had shouted when she'd brought it up to him for the third time. He'd slammed his hand against the wall, denting the plaster beside the door of her hotel room. "But what the fuck else should I expect from you?"

It was the last time she'd seen him in a few days. As far as she knew, he was spending time terrorizing her lower level agents, causing chaos wherever he could among the ranks. She was tired of it. She had been ecstatic at his return, but now he was doing nothing but making her life more difficult.

Savannah glanced at her watch. It was getting late. He'd sent a lower-level agent to her earlier in the day with a request for a meeting. Undoubtedly, he wanted to talk about their sabotaged Barnes recon mission.

_Goddamn Avengers._

There had been unforeseeable miscalculations. Savannah was prepared to accept that as part of the job and continuing pursuing Barnes, but Rumlow didn't feel the same. He'd forced her and their small team back to Germany to "regroup."

That had been a month ago. What he'd really meant, Savannah was still working to figure out. He had hardly spoken to her since that night in Geneva. When they had spoken, it ended in a screaming match and someone slamming doors on their way out of the room.

As she stepped off the elevator and into the hotel lobby, she wondered why Brock was asking for her now. She'd half-expected him to simply leave them there in Berlin and pursue his own intentions.

Savannah made her way into the dimly-lit dining hall to find him sitting in a far corner. Even with nothing but the light of a muted television to light her way, she could tell he wasn't shielded in the armor he'd been wearing every other time she'd seen him since his return.

Without it, he looked strangely human. Vulnerable, almost.

Almost.

"You said he was dead," Rumlow said as Savannah approached the table. "You explicitly told me that Rogers was dead. Taken care of. I believe your exact words were, ' _won't be a problem anymore.'_  Strangely enough, the opposite seems to be true."

He looked up at her, his dark eyes colder than ever. The damaged, knotted skin across his face and bare arms resembled her own so closely. Her own burns had faded to white over time, but many of them were still ugly and raised across various parts of her body.

"I know," Savannah said. She sat down gingerly and leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. The pistol tucked down the waistband of her jeans dug into her spine, but she didn't flinch. She didn't know why she was there or where the conversation would lead. She needed to be prepared. With a few nods, she settled forward and rested her arms on the table. "I know."

Rumlow jerked forward, nearly making her jump. "So, were you lying or are you just fucking  _stupid_?"

"I watched him fall," Savannah said, her voice remaining even and cool. "I assumed the Asset had it taken care of. Clearly, I was wrong."

"Yeah." Brock's voice was practically a growl as he cast his gaze away from her. "You didn't think to check for a body?"

"I did. Admittedly, I wasn't thorough." Brock snorted. She sat back in her chair again and ran a hand through her hair. "I was more concerned with recovering the Asset. I thought everyone was dead."

"Yeah, we went over that part already."

Savannah rolled her eyes and settled her cheek into the palm of her hand. She was bored of him already. Bored of his scolding, his condescension. Her fingers itched to reach for her firearm.

Instead, her eyes fell to his hands, tightly clutching each other. The same hands she'd given into so many times just get gain an inch, a piece of information, then another, and another. They were ugly and discolored now. She didn't believe in karma, but maybe that's what someone else might have called it—how ugly and deformed Brock Rumlow was now.

Karma for being so easily manipulated and for attempting to manipulate so many other people. Agents. Girls younger than Savannah had been.

She pulled herself back from her reverie. Her eyes came back to his face, half-cast in shadow.

"Why am I here?"  
  
Brock leaned back in his chair. It was the first time Savannah noticed the cup of coffee sitting in front of him. He raised it to his mouth and took a long sip before he spoke.  
  
"If you can't give this up this obsession with Barnes, I'm leaving and I'm not coming back, King. HYDRA is a poison, and if you won't give it up—"  
  
"You don't know what you're saying," Savannah said, a bit too quickly. She glanced at her hands and then back at him. "Your perception is warped. Just because people didn't rush to your aid when you came back, just because no one was willing to fall in beneath you again—"  
  
She was cut off when he slammed his hand on the small table, sloshing coffee into his lap and onto the floor. Her hand reflexively went to her back. It happened too quickly to mask the action.

Brock's eyes flashed with livid realization.  
  
"Really? You're going to pull a gun on  _me_?"  
  
"I always come prepared," Savannah said with a tilt of her head. She tightened her hand on the firearm, but didn't draw it. "Never know what to expect."  
  
"This is exactly what I'm talking about. HYDRA is a poison of the mind. Can't be trusted. I can't even trust you not to try to put a fucking bullet in my head." He looked like he wanted to punctuate that sentence by spitting in her face. "I _trained_  you, God dammit."

He sounded so angry, almost betrayed, as if those last few words should have meant something to Savannah.   
  
"Maybe that's why I felt like I needed to bring a gun to a meeting with you in a darkened room."  
  
Something flashed in Brock's eyes. Before then, it had been something bordering on betrayal. But this look... it was purely homicidal.   
  
"Listen to me very carefully, King. You will give up on Barnes and stop wasting resources on this stupid little dream of reviving HYDRA—" He leaned forward. He still hadn't made any move to wipe up the coffee. "—or I will drag you by your hair back to the States. Let S.H.I.E.L.D. deal with you for a few months. I'm sure you and Romanoff would have great fun."  
  
Savannah couldn't manage more than a short exhale. Their eyes burned into each other's as he went on.  
  
"Then, I'd come back, break you out. Bring you back here or to one of your other clever little bases. And maybe by then, I'd have tracked Barnes down myself. I'd let him have his way with you. Or maybe I'd put a fucking bullet in your head myself."  
  
Savannah's heart was racing, but she wasn't afraid. There wasn't an ounce of fear running through her.

It was all white-hot rage. She was practically trembling with it, overflowing with it at the fact that Brock Rumlow thought he could sit across from her, unarmed, and threaten her life. Give her orders.

Without another moment's hesitation, she pulled her gun, cocked it, and pressed the barrel flush against his forehead.   
  
The way she had to lean forward made the table tilt toward her, running cold coffee down the front of her shirt and pants. It wasn't an ideal position, but she didn't need perfect posture to execute the scum sitting across from her.   
  
"Okay. My turn," she said.

Her breath came in uneven, shaking puffs from her flared nostrils. She wished she could stop it so he wouldn't think it was from fear. She had never been afraid of Brock Rumlow. And even if she had been at some early point in her career, she never would be again.

"You never speak to me like that again. Those days are over, do you fucking understand me? You don't get to speak to me like that anymore. Not after you fled for an entire year and let me piece this organization back together alone. I don't need you here. No one does.

I don't need you to be anywhere else, either. Especially not if you're going to keep rounding up agents and murdering them. So help me God, I'll fucking end your sorry life right now if it means stopping you from carrying out your ridiculous, convoluted plan of wiping us out."  
  
Brock didn't say a word. After several moments, Savannah lowered her weapon and sat back in her chair.   
  
"Leave. I don't care." She stood abruptly and kept her firearm in hand. "Malveux will be coming back soon. Even if she wasn't, it wouldn't matter. We don't need you. We will find the Asset with or without you. And, I give you my word, if we do it without you, I know who the first target will be."

Savannah left without another word.


	13. 12. **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * TW *
> 
> sexual assault, mild body horror & gore.

**December 23, 2015.**

**Secondary New HYDRA Base.**

**Munich, Germany.**

 

The snow fell silently on the wet pavement as Alina crossed the street. She lifted her eyes to the building looming before her. It was only a Marriott hotel, nothing special.

Perhaps the reason it made her so uneasy was that she knew what was waiting for her beyond the giant pane glass windows. Rather, she knew  _who_  was waiting there. She still wasn't sure what to expect.

As she stepped inside, her unrest only grew. It really was just an ordinary hotel. There were normal-looking people milling around the lobby, waiting at the elevator, checking out at the front desk. There wasn't HYDRA paraphernalia adorning every inch of the entrance; not that she had expected that, but somehow, the mundane nature of it all made the place even more unsettling.

From her understanding, Savannah and her crew had been working on securing hotels across Europe as bases of operation for the past several months. The first had been in Berlin, and there were two or three more in Poland and France.

They started from the top-down, so when Alina stepped out of the elevator on the seventh floor and found armed men pacing the halls, she wasn't entirely surprised. Maybe ordinary citizens wouldn't have realized they were carrying weapons, but Alina had come to recognize the way firearms and throwing knives changed the way a person walked and set their shoulders.

One man that she recognized from her early days nodded at her as she passed. He wasn't pacing like the others; it seemed like he was acting as a bodyguard for room 701. Alina wondered if that was Rumlow's room and almost shuddered.

There was some sort of meeting planned between the three of them for later in the evening. She wasn't looking forward to it. She'd rather sleep, even if it was just for an hour or two. When she located room 720 and let herself in, it became abundantly clear that a nap wasn't in the agenda.

Savannah was sitting in the middle of the bed, feet stretched out in front of her. When Alina crossed the threshold and let the door close behind her, Savannah shut off the television. Alina doubted she'd been very interested in it anyway.

"Glad to see you made it in one piece," she said. There wasn't anything in her voice to indicate if she was being sarcastic or genuine.

"Yeah." Alina let out a short breath as she lowered her duffel bag to the floor. She winced, and Savannah's expression changed marginally. "Still healing."

"I wasn't sure your story would check out," Savannah said. "Thought maybe it was a cover so you could get over here under the radar."

"Nope." Alina made her way to the bed but didn't sit. She pulled up the left side of her shirt to reveal the ugly stitches holding an inch and a half of her abdomen together. "Real bullet hole, fake story. I'm technically on medical leave, but I'm sure S.H.I.E.L.D. won't mind a quick tour around Europe. I deserve it."

Savannah didn't show any sign of being entertained. She briefly examined the wound on Alina's side, but her eyes eventually drifted back to the blank television screen. She was preoccupied, probably with her hatred for Rumlow. Alina didn't know much, but she'd heard enough to know that they weren't exactly on speaking terms.

"You said it was a HYDRA raid?" Savannah asked. Her voice sounded absent, but something else lurked beneath the surface. Suspicion. Distrust. Alina nodded. A sick feeling twisted in her gut. "Ironic."

"You know where my loyalty lies," she said, narrowly dodging a defensive tone. "But I can't just throw up my hands and refuse to participate if you want me to get the information you need."

Savannah nodded, her lower lip trapped between her teeth. She continued nodding as Alina went on.

"I still don't know who shot me. It happened so fast." She shivered, her hand absently running over the fabric of her shirt. The wound was still tender. "It put me out of action faster than I could figure out if it was HYDRA or S.H.I.E.L.D. shooting at me. They pulled me out and threw me in ICU. As soon as I recovered, they sent me home. Now I'm here."

"As long as you can make yourself useful, it doesn't matter much how you got turned into Swiss cheese," Savannah said. Her dark eyes came to rest on Alina's face, though it always felt like she was looking right through her. Her voice was the same cold monotone, but the words she spoke came as a shock. "You're right. I know where your loyalty lies. I wish I could say I'm sorry that it almost got you killed, but you volunteered to be a mole."

Savannah pushed herself of the bed and onto her feet in one fluid motion. Alina took her first full breath since she'd entered the room.

"You and Rumlow will be interested in the intel I have. It's not much, but it's valuable." Alina moved to the bed and sat down gingerly, her abdomen screaming at her all the way down. "What time do I need to meet you two? I want to lay down for a minute. Jet lag, you know."

"Any intel is valuable regarding the Asset." Savannah was already on her way out of the room. She stopped with her hand on the knob but didn't turn back to face Alina. "Nine o'clock. 801."

"Sounds good," Alina said.

Alina laid down the moment the door closed behind Savannah. She was grateful even for a just a few moments of quiet to sort through her thoughts. However, she didn't get around to much contemplation at all. Within moments, Alina found herself drifting away from consciousness and falling into a deep sleep that she only ever had the luxury of experiencing when she was severely jet lagged.

Hours later, she was jolted awake by a knock at the door. She sat up slowly, unsure that that was what it had been until another string of aggressive knocking came. It sounded more like the person on the other side repeatedly punching her door.

"I'm coming, Jesus Christ," Alina muttered as she pried herself off the bed and limped across the room. Whatever pain medicine she'd taken earlier in the day had long-since worn off. She glanced at the clock. It was hardly seven thirty, she wasn't sure why someone would be so vehemently pounding on her door. "Is there something—"

Brock grunted and shouldered past Alina as soon as she unlatched the door. She stood back, dumbfounded, as he crossed the room and pulled the curtains open to reveal the inky night sky.

"Savannah told me nine o'clock," she said. She kept the door open for a long moment. An uneasy feeling swept over her. "She also said we're meeting upstairs. Not here."

"I'm well aware," he snarled. Alina shivered and closed the door, against her better judgement. "I came to visit, is that so wrong?"

"I'm just wondering why." Alina crossed her arms and leaned heavily against the door. "There's nothing I have to share with you that I won't be telling Savannah. If you're hoping for exclusive intel—"

"I'm not." Brock turned to face her then.

The look in his eyes turned her blood cold. She wanted to open the door again. Run away.

Instead, Alina gave him a flat smile and blinked once at him before she moved into the bathroom. She couldn't think clearly with the throbbing in her side. As she dug through the medicine bag on the counter, she was acutely aware of Rumlow's presence looming in the doorway.

"I came to see if you're as delusional as King is," he said. Something in his voice still unsettled Alina. Over time, she had tried to pin it down. She couldn't. She had started to think that maybe he was just an uncomfortable person to be around. Especially now. He was so ugly and burnt and damaged. She couldn't help but think that at the very least, the outside of him matched the inside now. "To see if you're as stupidly obsessed with Barnes as she is. Or if you're willing to strike a deal and be sensible."

"Striking up a deal with you hardly seems sensible," Alina said absently as she pulled fresh a fresh gauze pad from her med bag and set it aside. She dug out her bottle of painkillers and tossed two down with a sip of water. She hoped they'd kick in before the conversation ended. "I don't know anything about the problems you and Savannah are having, but I don't want any part of them. I'm here to deliver intel, maybe have some fun, and go back to S.H.I.E.L.D.. I made that clear from the beginning."

She looked up at him in the mirror as she undressed her wound. It stung so badly, she wondered if it had gotten infected at some point on her way from the States to Europe.

"Have some fun, hm?" Brock murmured. She felt him step closer to her, but she kept her eyes down as she taped a new piece of gauze to her swollen skin. "Can I help with that?"

When his hand brushed her bare hip, Alina smacked it away and pulled her t-shirt down in a single motion that happened too fast for her to think about not doing it. Instinct.

 _Instinct will get you killed around here._  Alina wasn't sure if it had been Brock who told her that the first time she flinched in training. It could've just as well been Savannah.

It didn't matter with his fingers closed around her left wrist in a vice grip.

"Let me go," Alina said. Her voice was hoarse, weaker than she had hoped. She kept her eyes down, scanning the countertop for anything she could grab with her free hand. Her weak hand. What could she do? Hit him over the head with gauze? The paper cup sitting beside the sink? "I said—"

"I asked you a question." Brock's voice was hard as diamonds and sharp as glass. It made her wince, or maybe it was the way she'd tried to twist out of his grip without thinking. "Maybe I should rephrase?"

"No," Alina said firmly. She looked up at him, unsettled further by the smirk pulling up the corner of his mouth. In the harsh, almost sterile light of the bathroom, the burns on his face stood out in a way that hurt her eyes. "To both. To all of the above. I'm not obsessed with Barnes and I have no interest in your idea of  _fun_. Now let go of my fucking arm."

Alina almost cried out in relief when he did. She had to hold herself back from slumping against the marble counter and taking as many deep breaths as she could get.

"King's delusional. She thinks finding Barnes will somehow revitalize HYDRA and make everything go back to the way it was before." He stepped closer to her again. She wanted to step back, but soon found her legs pressed against the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl. "I keep trying to talk her out of it, see things the right way—"

"The right way?" Alina knew it was better to stay silent, but she couldn't stop talking. She was cornered and the crazed look in Brock's eyes sent shocks of adrenaline through her. "The right way is targeting your own agents, drawing them out, making them feel safe, and then executing them?"

"They're not  _my_  agents." Brock only broke eye contact to spit on the beige tile between them. "They're weak, clinging to dead dreams of world domination. HYDRA died with Alexander Pierce. Barnes couldn't even kill Rogers. That was his one purpose, his one job. Anything that's left of HYDRA is a parasitic disease that deserves to be wiped out."

Alina sucked in a sharp breath as Brock stepped closer to her. She could feel his breath on her face now, smell it. It was rancid.  _He_ was rancid.

"I'm giving you an out, Alina. A chance to come with me and help destroy the rest of HYDRA rather than burn with it. I tried to give King the same offer. She won't give it up." He gave her a sickening, gut-wrenching smirk. She wanted to tell him not to call her by her first name, but the urge to vomit down the front of him choked her. "You're still valuable as a mole, you know. Help me take out King, and I'll help you take down S.H.I.E.L.D. next."

"I'm not going to challenge Savannah. Not after everything." Alina tried to take a miniscule step backwards, and almost fell onto the toilet. "I'm sorry. I don't subscribe to your insanity any more that she does."

"But you'd challenge  _me_?" Something flashed in Brock's eyes. He clamped his hands down on each of her arms. "After everything?"

Alina sucked in a short breath and twisted away from him. She caught a glimpse of her own terror-stricken face in the mirror as he took hold of her left wrist and used it to pull her back into his chest. She lifted her right hand to land a blow to his head and missed miserably. Even as a highly trained agent, she simply wasn't right-handed.

"Cute," Brock muttered. He used his free hand to press her body closer to his. His hip dug into the wound on her left side, and she couldn't hold back the scream that came out. "Oh, sweetheart."

"Let me go!" Alina screamed as loud as she could manage, pounding at his chest with her right hand. She spat in his face and tried to twist away again, but her strength simply wasn't there. Instead, she used the leverage and pulled herself closer to him, injecting as much venom as she could into her next words. "I'm not one of your fifteen-year-old, brainwashed sex toys. You will not manipulate me like one of them."

"You're right, you're much too old now to be manipulated," Brock said. He shoved her back into the marble counter, still holding tightly to her left wrist. Too tightly. There would be a bruise in the shape of a hand print when he finally let go, if not a minor fracture. She was sure of it. "I guess I'll have to use other methods to make you see my point of view."

Alina sucked in sharp breath, realizing too late what was about to unfold. She pulled away a third time, more willing to dislocate her own wrist than she was to keep Brock Rumlow's hands on her for any longer.

She squirmed away from his prying hands as they tore at her clothes and hair. Pills skittered onto the floor, a roll of gauze went rolling under the bed in the next room. At some point in the struggle to maintain control over her own body, Alina had given up screaming for spitting, biting, kicking, and swearing at him with every ounce of strength left in her body.

It didn't last long. Alina hadn't been able to keep with her conditioning, her training, for several weeks. She'd been confined to a hospital bed while she recovered. She wasn't a match for his newfound strength and, more than that, his anger at Savannah.

When she continued to struggle, he wrenched both of her arms behind her back and threw her to the floor. On the way down, her head collided with the corner of the marble countertop and the world went dark.

Alina awoke in a daze: shaking, freezing, in pain, and unaware of how much time had passed. Her face was pressed to the cold tile of the bathroom floor. The ground beneath her hands was slippery as she tried to push herself up, and she only made it as far as a slumped sitting position against the toilet.

As the realization dawned on her, she flipped up the seat and retched. A new sensation washed through her entire body. Burning, aching pain that started in her abdomen but radiated both up and down. Her head was pounding, but she could hardly think about that.

She was lying on the bathroom floor in nothing but torn underwear and a black t-shirt that was saturated with her own blood. With shaking hands, she dared to lift the hem of the shirt and nearly threw up again at the sight. Most of the stitches had completely torn, leaving quite the gaping, bleeding gash in her side.

She was beginning to lose her grip. Her breath came in short, heavy bursts as she slid across the floor and gripped the edge of the counter. Her vision swam. She hardly had the strength to pull herself to her feet.

When she did manage to get to her feet, she nearly collapsed again.

_Hyperventilating._

_You're hyperventilating. Take a breath. Drink some water. You need to redress the wound._

_You're meeting with Savannah at nine. You're meeting with Savannah and Rumlow at—_

Alina blew long breaths out of her mouth as she pawed through the spilled contents of the medicine bag for several minutes. She finally found the delicate sewing needle beneath her feet, slick with blood and whatever else.

Of course she'd had the foresight to bring it in case something happened, but the thread she'd brought a long with it had gone missing. She didn't have time to look for it.

Without a moment's hesitation, Alina staggered back into the bedroom and collapsed on the edge of the bed. She dug in her duffel bag until she came across a fresh container of dental floss. She went to work.

_Steady your fingers, God dammit. You've done this before. You've had to stitch yourself up after worse. You've done worse. The sting now isn't half as bad as it was when you were shot. Just finish the stitch, Malveux._

By that point, her hyperventilation had turned into full-blown hysterical sobs. The pain had almost completely left her mind. The sting of stitching spearmint-flavored dental floss through her skin was nothing compared to the imagery that was coming back to her in heavy, intense waves.

_Why did you keep screaming at him? Why did you keep resisting? All you had to do was lie. You should have kept lying, just like you always lie. You're an agent. That's your job. Why didn't you lie? Why did you have to stand up to him? You knew this would happen._

_You knew it would go downhill. Young girls don't make it out of darkened rooms with Brock Rumlow untouched. Sometimes they don't even make it out alive. You knew that. You know that. You should have done better._

She abandoned the needle and dental floss. The haphazard job would have to do until she could get to a hospital or at the very least, someone with medical supplies and experience. The sooner she could do that, the better. She had to get out of this hotel.

Alina glanced at the time. Eight thirty. She had thirty minutes.

How long had it lasted? How long has she been unconscious?

She brought he hand up to her head and winced at the sensation. There was a swollen lump on the left side of her forehead, from what she could tell. She still hadn't looked in the mirror.

Instead, she looked down at her wrist. Sure enough, Brock Rumlow's handprint was there.

_His handprints are everywhere. All over me. He's all over me. Inside me._

The thought should have brought another wave of hysterical sobbing, but instead, Alina stood and limped into back into the bathroom.

The tile was slick with her blood.

It wasn't as bad as she had originally thought. It was only as severe as it was because she'd been lying face-down when it happened. She lifted her eyes to her own face, bloodied, bruised, and streaked with tears. Her bottom lip was split and trembling.

She looked worse than she had the first day after her HYDRA initiation. Worse than the first time this had happened to her.

_And you will never look like this again._

With trembling hands, she managed to scoop up a few loose pain pills and swallow them. Next, she took the closest thing to a shower she could get. The water burned as it ran over the gash in her side, and her hands almost shook too much to properly wash herself. At the very least, she got the blood out of her hair, out from beneath her fingernails, and brushed her teeth.

Hair still dripping, Alina leaned over her bed. Two file folders laid on the mattress in front of her. One was significantly bulkier than the other.

They were both labeled identically:

_CONFIDENTIAL_

_BARNES, JAMES BUCHANAN_

_ALIAS: THE WINTER SOLDIER_

_A.K.A. THE ASSET_

Alina had already been debating which file to give to Rumlow and Savannah. Before she left the States, she'd started having second thoughts about HYDRA and their plans for the Asset. After everything that had happened in the short span of just a few hours, Alina knew what she was going to do without a shadow of a doubt. What she _had_  to do.

"Italy," Alina whispered to herself, adding to her list of mental notes as she gathered up the smaller of the two file folders. She slid the thicker of the two back into her bag. "He's heading toward Italy. Move quickly, you can corner him. Peninsula. Nowhere to go. Can't get on a plane. Can't take a boat. Not without us knowing. HYDRA always knows. Eyes everywhere."

With one last glance at her shrunken, bruised face in the bathroom mirror, she set out to seal the fate of HYDRA and the Winter Soldier.


	14. 13.

**February 1, 2016.**

**Bucharest, Romania.**

Bucky closed the door as quietly as he could manage with its squeaky hinges. The small apartment, if he could even think of it as one, was almost completely empty. There was a bare mattress on the floor under one of the two windows, a fridge, and a rickety-looking kitchen table. The only other things occupying the space were Bucky and all of the dust motes that he kicked up as he paced the creaking floor.

There was a back door, too, that led out onto the roof. He nodded to himself, reassured that this room would be the best for him. The top floor, removed from anyone living below. The woman who owned the building had been very accommodating. She didn't ask a lot of questions about Bucky's quiet nature or odd request for an isolated room.

He wanted to believe that it was simply because she was a nice lady, but there would always be the tugging suspicion that her kindness was ill-intentioned. No matter how many times he managed to shake those thoughts away, they always returned.

It had been five months since the incident in Geneva. Bucky still wasn't sure that he'd recovered from seeing Savannah. Her face was still burnt into his memory: the tight smile on her face as she'd gunned down her own agent, the one who'd shot him. Without hesitation. She never hesitated.

He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his human hand to his fevered forehead. Even thinking about her, just remembering, made his head spin. He focused on settling in and slung his backpack onto the kitchen table.

There wasn't much he could do with the space, but he could try. The plan wasn't to stay for very long, but while he was there he could at least make himself comfortable.

_ Comfortable.  _ Whatever that meant.

He took two of the newest journals he'd bought out of his bag and set them on the table. They were mostly empty, unlike the two full-sized notebooks he kept for more important things, the ones that he poured over for days at a time as his memories came back to him. Those remained safely in the bag as Bucky wandered across the floor, looking for a board that would pull up the easiest.

It turned out that every one of the boards wouldn't give much resistance, so he went with one that was close to the back door. Quick and easy access, if he needed it. Before he secured his bag beneath the floor, he pulled out some of the nonperishable food he'd stocked up on before deciding that Bucharest was where he'd try to settle.

Granola, jerky, a few cans of soup. Things that would keep him alive without weighing him down. He'd grown very good at running in the past few months. There wasn’t another choice. If he couldn't run and keep himself alive while doing it, he didn't have a chance at survival.

Bucky shivered and pulled out a chair at the wobbly kitchen table. One of the downsides of the landlady not asking questions was that she didn't mention anything about electricity, water, or heat in this apartment. The room gained some warmth from being on the top floor, but there wasn't much more than that.

_ It's better than nothing,  _ Bucky wrote on the next blank page of his journal.  _ Better than running through the snow at night, or worse, sleeping in it. At least this is... safe. I'm not sure I should call it that yet. Nowhere stays safe for very long. _

He took a moment to think about the last few days, the week since he'd been in Romania. He had noticed a difference in the types of people around him. They weren't so shadowy, so menacing. Maybe it was his paranoia subsiding, but maybe it was genuine change. Perhaps he'd really lost them.

_ Romania has been safe so far. I don't get weird looks, but that might be because it's so cold right now. No chance for people to notice an entire metal limb if I'm all bundled up. But anyway, it's been nice, I guess. But the fear stays. It's always there, in the back of my mind. _

_ Sometimes, I’ll have a good day. Things will feel all right, and I can go through the motions without losing my grip. But then I’ll either fall asleep or sit still too long and my mind just runs rampant and all I can think about is what would happen if they found me. What could happen.  _

_ I’ve thought about it a lot, what I’d do. A lot of the time I’ll get stuck in a run and it’s all I can think about.  _

_ Geneva completely turned me upside down. I thought I was doing all right. I’d worked so hard to flush them out, but seeing her _

Bucky gently set the pen in the binding of the journal. He took a deep breath and ran his hands over his face. The cool metal of his left palm was comforting, but his right was clammy, cold, and trembling. He didn’t plan to write much more. Just enough so the entry felt finished. 

_ I think my perception of how I was doing was all wrong. It really fucked with my head to realize that. Maybe in the end, it turned out to be a good thing. Because it has made me think seriously about what I would do. Being found is a real possibility, no matter how unpleasant.  _

_ As far as I figure, there’s two options if HYDRA ever gets their hands on me or near me again.  _

_ I’ll either have to kill myself before they can get back in my head, or just let them in. Death or complete submission. I don’t think I could fight through it all again, especially after being free for this long. I’d rather die than be aware of what they do.  _

_ Become a martyr or a puppet. Those are my options. I’m not counting on anything else. I won’t expect anything from Steve and his team. I can’t. They’re too public, especially right now. Even if they did want to help, I couldn’t let them.  _

_ I’d run from them, too, for everyone’s sake.  _

Bucky closed the journal and stood. He pried up the floorboard with ease and replaced the small leather volume in his backpack. 

As he ran a hand through his unwashed hair, he took in the narrow space, nodding silently to himself. The sun had fallen and cast the room in shadow. Bucky eyed the barren, dirty mattress on the other side of the room.

It was enough, at least for the time being. 


	15. 14.

**March 24, 2016.**

**Covert HYDRA Base.**

**Munich, Germany.**

 

Cold air swept in the door behind Savannah as she waltzed into the lobby, her nose and cheeks flushed from the wind and snow. Only a few of the bustling agents around her stopped. Most of them didn’t know her face and didn’t give her a second glance. One of the women she’d taken on her pursuit of Barnes slid past her and spoke to the man behind the front desk. 

Savannah unwound her scarf from around her neck and shook the snow from her hair. It had been months since she’d been back at the Munich base, but it seemed that nothing much had changed. The only new things were the absence of Alina and Brock, and the more she thought about that, the less she minded. 

“Anyone get ahold of Malveaux? I need updates, new intel.”

“The last time she gave us intel, it turned out to be absolute shit.”

A wave of heat washed over her face. She’d made it this long without putting a bullet through any of Agent Ramos’ body, but Savannah’s tolerance was wearing extremely thin. The two of them, accompanied by six other agents, had been together for three months without any serious incidents. 

Savannah had managed to gather a group that was almost as interested in bringing Barnes back as she was, which served to be mostly an advantage. It was times like these that she wished it were possible to pursue Barnes on her own. 

“Malveaux was given bad intel by the incompetent organization that she’s pretending to work for,” Savannah said. She brushed off her momentary anger at Ramos and proceeded further into the lobby toward the elevator. “That’s why I needed someone to get ahold of her, but I can’t say I’m shocked to discover no one has been following orders while I’ve been away.”

“It’s not entirely our fault,” an agent that Savannah didn’t recognize chided. He’d fallen in beside her and Ramos, his face flushed. There was a tinge of a German accent to his voice. “Rumlow left right after you did. Went rogue. We hardly have any leadership here aside from the orders coming in from you. Even then, it’s hard to get anything carried out. It’s worse in Berlin. He—”

Savannah’s hand reflexively went to the sidearm in her belt, her fingers itching for a kill, but when the agent stopped himself, so did she. 

“Don’t talk to me about Berlin.” She could tell that Ramos and the young man were surprised by the lack of anger in her tone and it almost made her smile. She jammed her finger into the elevator button and crossed her arms. “Someone get ahold of Alina before bullets start flying here, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the young man said. The flush in his cheeks immediately drained as he raised two trembling hands when Savannah drew her weapon, cocked it, and aimed it at his forehead. “I—”

“Don’t call me ma’am. Jesus Christ.” 

She lowered her gun from his head to his left foot and fired. The bullet grazed the toe of his boot and lodged itself in the beige carpet beneath their feet. The entire lobby fell silent, all eyes searching for a corpse. 

“Y-Yes, Agent King.”

The elevator dinged and Savannah stepped inside, leaving Ramos and the hysterical agent on the ground floor. As the doors closed behind her, she let out a long breath and fell back against one of the cool, metal walls. 

_ Rumlow. _

God damn him. 

He’d always been the bigger HYDRA fanatic between the two of them. Savannah’s interests were more focused on using the Asset to help them gain power over the rest of the world, while Brock’s were abstract and based in destruction and pain. It made sense that he’d go rogue, after everything. Savannah partially wished he would have refocused his anger to facilitate HYDRA’s rebirth, but it was easier to justify his death if he was going to continue to ruining her plans and killing her agents. 

She threw the door of her hotel room shut with a force that shook the walls. Lately, her interests had become less focused than she could ever remember them being. She was trying to balance between tracking Barnes, keeping tabs on Rumlow, and getting in contact with Malveaux. No ground had been gained on any front. 

The Barnes mission had gone three months with hardly any leads. Rumlow had executed another slew of agents that had been drawn out of hiding with talk of biological weapons and revolution. And Malveaux, as usual, was practically unreachable. 

Savannah planted herself on the edge of her bed and dialed the same number that had gone unanswered for weeks. Much to her surprise and frustration, it didn’t go to voicemail.

“Listen,” Alina said, her voice quiet. “I know—”

“No.  _ You _ listen, goddammit,” Savannah sprung up from the corner of the bed, heat burning across her body. “Your intel was shit. Garbage. You could have given me Tony Stark’s grocery receipts and I’d have figured out a better way to use them to my advantage. And then you go off the grid? Fucking unacceptable. If you were within range, there would already be more bullet holes in your body than S.H.I.E.L.D.’s med team could ever hope to sew up.” 

“Savannah, I gave you what I had.” There was a long pause during which Savannah continued to pace up and down her room, wanting nothing more than to be able to wrap her hands around Malveaux’s throat. “I’m not going to apologize—”

“Good, because then I’d have to send a sniper to put bullet holes in you for me, and I don’t have that kind of resource right now.”

“I gave you what I had,” Alina reiterated. “There’s… nothing on this end. Radio silence. They don’t care that Rumlow is murdering people. I heard about what he’s doing at the Berlin base. They don’t care about that either. I doubt you’ve been compromised.”

“Don’t—” Savannah squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fist around her phone. “Enough about Berlin! I’ll get Rumlow under control. Right now I’m dealing with you making me look like a fool.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Something useful,” Savannah hissed, her free hand clenched into a shaking fist at her side. “Just once in your miserable life, Malveaux. Tell me something I can fucking use. That’s your goddamn job.”

There was a long pause, but none of the shuffling that Savannah usually heard on Alina’s end of the phone. Perhaps S.H.I.E.L.D. really had lost interest, so much so that she didn’t even feel like she needed to hide their conversations. 

“I gave you what I had.” Alina finally said. “There’s nothing else.”

“These non-answers are getting old fast, Malveaux.”

“They’re the only answers I have.”

Savannah didn’t get the chance to hang up first. The line went dead before she could unleash the slew of vitriol that was brewing on her tongue. Instead, it boiled up over the surface. She threw her cell phone at the screen of the television in front of her and it left a spider web of cracks in the black Plexiglas. 

Her phone bounced onto the carpet, unharmed. That was more than could be said for any agents that got in her way or questioned her authority that night. Savannah was losing her patience and she wasn’t sure how long she’d be able to hold out before she went after Malveaux and S.H.I.E.L.D. herself. 

The Asset was always her first priority, but Alina’s misinformation and Brock’s betrayal had crippled her search for him. 

With a sound that fell just short of a growl, she knelt down and retrieved her phone, half-tempted to call Alina back and unleash an in-depth description of the torture she’d be suffering if the lack of information continued. 

Instead, she opened their barren text conversation and sent a simple message: 

_ Two weeks. Non-negotiable.  _

 


	16. 15.

**March 24, 2016.**

**Brooklyn, New York.**

“I thought S.H.I.E.L.D. was done, too.” He licked his finger and flipped the page in the hefty file that had been placed in front of him. The next time he spoke, his voice was much quieter. “Then again, can’t really say I’m shocked.”

Alina gave him a tight smile when he looked back up at her and sipped his coffee. This was the first time they’d spoken face-to-face. He looked much more tired in person than he did on the news fighting aliens with the rest of the Avengers.

“Why are you telling me—showing me all this?” He went on, his focus captured once more by the pages in front of him. “What’s the point? S.H.I.E.L.D. is back and the same as they were before. What does that have to do with—”

“I’m trying to show you that I’m trustworthy,” Alina said. Her hands tightened on the back of the chair. She had been in Steve Roger’s kitchen for twenty minutes and still hadn’t relaxed enough to sit down. “I figured it’d be easiest to start from the bottom. Once you trust me, then I can tell you how we can help each other.”

Steve raised his eyes and looked at her for a long moment.

“You could probably start by sitting down. That would make you look less defensive.”

Alina licked her lips and planted herself firmly on the cool hardwood.

“Better?”

“Yes.” A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth as he set his coffee mug aside. “Can I get you something?”

“Answers,” Alina said. She folded her hands in front of her, sliding to the edge of her chair. She didn’t know where she’d go if this fell through. “S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t doing enough. They don’t… care. They don’t care about Rumlow and King and HYDRA. They don’t—”

Her head fell into her hands as the thought sunk in even further:  _ They don’t care about HYDRA. How can they not care about HYDRA? _

It was hard enough to swallow for Alina; how was she supposed to convince Captain America?

“It doesn’t seem right,” Steve said. He was reading again. “I mean, it’s basically all here in print, but it’s still hard to wrap my head around, I guess. I always had my doubts about S.H.I.E.L.D., and the last couple years have really… proved the worst, to put it lightly.”

Alina sucked in a breath, but couldn’t bring herself to exhale. Some irrational part of her thought that if Steve felt her breath across the table, she’d blow his trust away and lose all of her hope along with it. 

“What can I do?”

It took a moment for the question to sink in, but Steve didn’t rush her, merely continued flipping through the pages. It seemed as though he didn’t expect an answer right away. Before Alina had gathered a response, he went on absently. 

“You’re asking for help with Rumlow and this other agent. Talking about how S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t care enough about these HYDRA splinter groups. But there’s a reason you came  _ here _ .” 

He kept talking but didn’t look up, and Alina’s stomach continued to tighten. 

“There’s a reason you think I’ll help you. Not Stark, not anyone else with influence or power. You came here, specifically.” Steve finally lifted his blue eyes to Alina’s. She saw a touch of pain in them, something more than just the vague exhaustion. “You know where he is.”

“No,” Alina said. It was one fact she could state with confidence. “I don’t know where he is. You wouldn’t want me to. It’d be a liability.”

Steve shifted in his seat and took up his coffee mug again, his brow furrowed. She had his attention. 

“This other agent, Savannah King…” Alina shook her head and dropped her eyes to the surface of the table. “She helped create him. The Soldier. The Asset, they called him. We all did. But Savannah—”

Her voice dropped off as a whole slew of memories came back to her. She closed her eyes and collected herself, trying to push the worst of it away. 

_ Not here. Not now. _

“We all… created him. Stood by while Pierce and his team pulled him apart, put him back together, and broke him. Over and over and over.” She paused to look at Steve, but his face hadn’t changed. His brow was still creased with intent interest, the ceramic mug clutched between his two massive palms. “Savannah is different. As far as I know, she was always different. That’s why they wanted her. She… liked it.”

“Liked what, exactly?” 

“All of it. Everything that HYDRA stands for, she loves,” Alina answered without a moment’s hesitation. “At first, just watching. Learning. Researching about this man—this machine, really—that HYDRA had been working on for nearly a century. But then she just started… started killing. And I think that’s the only thing she liked more than seeing what they did to him. She would kill anyone who tried to stop her from getting close to him. Everyone except Rumlow. She needed him too much. Anyone lower-ranking than him was fair game.”

“So why not you?”

It was the first time Alina heard anything close to distrust in his voice. She didn’t blame him and went on without a change in her tone.

“I never got in her way,” she said. “I was quiet because becoming a HYDRA agent was hard enough. I wasn’t good at it, especially not compared to her, but I didn’t have another option. Savannah helped me in the beginning, so when the time came for her revolution, I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” Steve said, almost robotically. His voice was empty, cold.

However, the look in his eyes had changed; it was softer now. Despite his words, Alina knew he understood what she was saying because he didn’t go on.

“You’re right. There’s always a choice. And with Savannah, it was either choose her or choose death. I wanted to live.” A few beats passed while Alina tried to decide how honest to be. There was no reason to mince her words, but she couldn’t help but feel ashamed. “She made it sound like what she wanted to do was the right thing. By the time I realized the full extent of what they were doing to your friend, it was far too late.”

Steve’s expression hardened. “You called him a machine earlier. Said they had been  _ working  _ on him for a century. That doesn’t sound like you didn’t know what was going on.”

“That’s fair,” Alina said with a nod. “The new and lower-ranking agents that had the privileges to know about him thought he was a willing participant. Me, personally, I thought…”

She shook her head and laid her cheek to rest in her right hand. 

“I thought he was as much of a fanatic as the rest of them. I learned very quickly that the opposite was true.” Alina bit the inside of her cheek and closed her eyes again. A chill ran over her skin. She could still feel the cool, artificial air that circulated through the underground corridors that Savannah had led her down so many times. “The first time Savannah brought me along to watch her work with him, I nearly fainted. I came very close to losing it completely. The things she did to him were… inhumane.”

“Yeah,” Steve said as his eyes drifted across his small kitchen. His voice was tight. “I think that much is assumed considering the final result.”

“No,” Alina said. She was trying to meet his eye, though she didn’t want to face this conversation. She didn’t want to see the pain she was putting him through, but she did want him to understand. “I’m telling you that what she did to him was inhumane by HYDRA’s standards. Before she came, Pierce and the handling team had a very precise process. They had the Asset down to a science. Of course, they tortured and abused him, but he was exactly that—an asset. Pierce and his team knew exactly how valuable he was so they were careful not to push him to a point that would make him useless to the cause.”

Steve closed his eyes when she said “handling team” and winced when she referred to his best friend as “the Asset.” It made Alina’s chest hurt. Her intention wasn’t to overwhelm him with details or to dehumanize Barnes any further. She opened her mouth to apologize, but Steve managed to get his words out first. 

“And what about after?” he asked. “What about after she came? Something obviously changed.”

“Yes.” Alina folded her hands together and brought them to her forehead. She blew out a long breath. “The whole process changed. She abandoned it entirely. What Pierce called ‘wiping’ became completely sporadic, where it had once been methodical and calculated. Savannah started doing it on a whim. Sometimes she’d leave them alone for weeks, the team. Pierce would start to get things back under control, but then she’d march back in and wreak havoc all over again.”

“It sounds like you were pretty up-close and personal,” Steve said. His voice was still dry, a bit on the offensive. There was an air of non-threatening interest about him, and he sipped his coffee before he went on. “When was it finally enough for you?”

Alina swallowed thickly. Somehow, she’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask. She shook her head and ran a hand through her hair. 

“Am I stalling if I say I’d like to take you up on that cup of coffee now?”

“Yes,” Steve said, already on his feet. “But I think we could both use a break.”

 

**——**

 

Alina stayed at the table while Steve stood at the counter and prepared two more cups of coffee. 

They both remained quiet through the process. Alina took up flipping through the S.H.I.E.L.D. file that she had become so familiar with. It didn’t feel like any time had passed when Steve came and sat across the table from her again.

She took a deep breath and clutched the warm mug between her hands. It was hard to know where she should start, but if she kept trying to figure out what the best route was, she’d never get there.

“I don’t know how much you know,” Alina said. “About what they did to him, I mean. And it’s not important for you to know all the details. It’s probably better if you don’t. After he survived that fall from the cliff, HYDRA knew they had something special. Barnes was—”

“You can just call him Bucky,” Steve said. “That’s his name.”

Alina hadn’t been watching him when she’d started speaking, but when she looked up at him now, it was clear that he was straining to say what he needed to say while maintaining politeness. She nodded and tried to keep that in mind. 

“I’m sure you know they were experimenting on him. After the Howling Commandos were captured.” Steve nodded, a far-off look in his eyes. “He was one of the only ones they got around to working on that actually survived, so when they got a second chance at what they were doing, they did as much as they could with him.”

“You sound like you know what you’re talking about.” Steve shifted in his chair and crossed his legs, his gaze focused on something beyond her. “It sounds like you’re just as interested as King.”

“I was,” Alina admitted. “I researched him just as much. No one was supposed to know about him, you know? Only agents like Pierce, Sitwell, Rumlow. So when Savannah started opening up the information about him, plenty of us were interested.”

Steve scoffed and turned his face away, his jaw set tightly. “You make him sound like some kind of guinea pig science experiment.”

“That’s exactly what he was.” Alina crossed her arms. She wanted to stay on target with this conversation. She had known it would be difficult. She understood these were hard things to hear. “That’s all he was in the beginning. Which leads me to my point. In those first twenty years after he was recaptured, all they did was experiment on him. It’s documented very well.”

“Yeah, Nazis were keen on that,” Steve said with a snort. “Still are, I guess.”

Alina leaned forward a bit. 

“The point I’m trying to make is that HYDRA did so much experimenting on your friend, there was very little left up to question. They knew how he reacted to every kind of stimuli, substance, or physical injury. All the of research had been done, if you could call it that.” 

She cleared her throat and closed her eyes. 

“So when I say that what Savannah did to him was inhumane, I’m not just talking about Pierce’s wiping process. I’m not just talking about electrocution and abuse. She recreated the original experiments. She was crude about it. She’d haphazardly inject him with things, seriously injure him, brutalize him to the point of being incapacitated for days. Just to see how he recovered, how it affected his super-soldier body.”

Alina felt sick, and it didn’t get any better when she opened her eyes to see Steve frozen in the same position he’d been sitting in before. Turned away from her, jaw set, a glassy look in his eyes. 

“Why did it happen?” He turned his gaze back to her. “If Pierce and Rumlow were so careful about all this, how did they just let her do this? Does she have some kind of mind control powers? Is she an Enhanced? I didn’t see that in this file of yours. What gave her that amount of power over them?”

“That’s the thing.” Alina shifted in her chair and dropped her eyes to the table. A new wave of nausea rolled over her. “I don’t know. I don’t think she is. I think she’s just evil, and ruthless, and that’s what gives her power. If you can call that superhuman, then sure, she’s an Enhanced.

Savannah was never shy about threatening people’s lives. She followed through on her threats like it was nothing, and that made people afraid. Friendly fire is not uncommon within organizations like HYDRA. If you disobey, you’re killed or tortured into compliance. But she took it to a new level. She killed people who got in her way just like everyone did. But she killed people who stayed away from her, too. People who looked at her the wrong way. People who didn’t choose a side.”

“I’m just having a hard time imagining someone like Rumlow taking orders from a younger agent. Someone he recruited.”  Steve shook his head and finally uncrossed his arms to take a long sip of his coffee. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“They were sleeping together,” Alina said. “She used that to manipulate him. Held it over his head. I agree that it doesn’t make sense, but for some reason, it was incredibly effective.” 

Something in Alina’s face must have said the rest, because Steve didn’t push her. He only gave her a short nod and looked down into his coffee. Even if he had pushed for more information, she didn’t have any plans to linger on Brock Rumlow’s sexual interests, no matter how disgusting or relevant. 

“So,” he said stiffly. “What’s your play, then? Why are we talking about this?”

Alina sighed and leaned forward, her arms crossed on the table. “I don’t know where Barnes is, but I can help you find him. We can help each other. I don’t want Savannah to find him any more than you do.”

“Why not? You’re playing both sides. Shouldn’t you want S.H.I.E.L.D. to get their hands on him? Arrest him or something?” Steve narrowed his eyes at her. Alina didn’t think he was actually all that skeptical. She had a hunch that the super-soldier sitting across from her was just as desperate as she was. “How do I know this isn’t some kind of trap?”

“If you really thought it was a trap, I think you would’ve been a bit more hesitant to let me in your house.” Alina flashed her S.H.I.E.L.D. badge at him the same way she had when she was standing in the doorway. “You probably would’ve needed a little more proof than this.”

Steve chuckled and finished off his coffee. He pulled the thick file folder back in front of him and flipped through a few of the pages. It was hard to tell what exactly was going through his mind. 

Disbelief? Shock? Was he still considering whether or not he could trust her? She’d laid it out as clearly as she could. She wasn’t sure where she’d go next if he decided she was untrustworthy.

“Look,” he finally said. Alina braced herself for rejection. “I’ve been at this for two years now, trying to find him. Sam and I haven’t gained any ground, so we started tracking Rumlow instead. That trail has pretty much gone cold, too.”

Alina took a deep breath, expecting the worst. _ If you can’t promise that the same thing won’t happen with you, I don’t think I can invest my time in this. I’m sorry. _

“You’re desperate, maybe even afraid of these people and what they’ll do to find my friend.” Steve closed the file and sat back in his chair. “We have that in common. It makes sense to bring someone into this who can actually help, who has real information from the inside. Now, I’m not asking you to be a mole—”

“Thank you,” Alina said. “I just—I want this to be over.  As soon as things are settled, I’m… I’m done with this. S.H.I.E.L.D., HYDRA… I’m finished.”

“That’s fair.” Steve stood from his seat and took his empty mug to the kitchen. “It’s always better to take control of that kind of thing before it takes control of you.”

Alina looked over at him. His back was still turned as he washed and dried his navy blue coffee cup. Especially from her vantage point—looking at how broad he was, how much raw strength his physical body must hold—it was hard to imagine that anything could control Steve Rogers.

“Yeah,” she muttered, mostly to herself. 

A wave of calm washed over her. Their meeting hadn’t been much, but somehow it also been everything. Things would change. She had a partner now. Even if she was killed trying to pull apart Savannah’s plans, she would do it as more than just a double agent, a mole, a rat. 

“Do you want some food? More coffee?” Alina turned to see Steve standing in front of the fridge, a bottle of mustard in one hand and a bag of lunch meat in the other. “I’m making lunch. You’re more than welcome to join. Sam and Natasha are on their way over. They’ve been working with me to track Bucky and Rumlow. I think it’d be good to brief them on this, too.”

“Yeah.” Alina faltered for a short moment before a small smile pulled up the corners of her mouth. Two more partners. Teammates. She was part of a team, one that wouldn’t try to kill her or worse the moment something went wrong. “That’d be good.”


	17. 16.

**April 12, 2016.**

**Covert HYDRA Base.**

**Munich, Germany.**

 

A knock came at the door and it swung open before Savannah had a chance to give the sweating agent permission to enter.

“We have updates from Berlin.” 

Savannah rose from the edge of her bed and narrowed her eyes at the scrawny, wide-eyed man standing before her. She clenched her fists and jammed them into the pockets of her jacket.

 _Hold it together, King. No reason to kill him before you have all the information._  

“Confirmed that it’s Rumlow,” the young man said, a slight tremble in his voice. He winced when Savannah stepped forward, hands still in her pockets.

“No shit, it’s Rumlow. I didn’t need confirmation that it was _him_ , I need confirmation—” 

“The Ramos intel was good. I don’t know where she got it—” 

 “It’s not important where she got it from. Don’t interrupt me.” Savannah stopped a few feet away from him, well within the range of her pistol. “I need numbers, body count, and a reason. Shoot.”

He didn’t hesitate another moment, but his eyes struggled to come to rest on a single point in the room.

“Fifteen dead, more coming in. The numbers aren’t solid yet. All Ramos said was that the whole surveillance team was… was wiped out.” He was trembling harder now, his eyes cast completely away from Savannah. He spoke to the floor. “We don’t even know if all of them are dead. All we know is that he definitely did something with them.”

“The surveillance team.” Savannah blew out a long breath through her nose. There was nothing but white noise in her ears. If the agent had responded to her, she wasn’t sure she’d have heard him. “The Asset surveillance team.”

“Y-Yes, Agent King.” He took a few slow steps backward, one hand already reaching for the door. “That’s what… That’s what Ramos told us. Told me. She sent me up here to tell you. I’m—”

Savannah moved her gaze back to the pathetic man trying to escape her judgement and tilted her head. A smile crawled its way across her face as her mind began to clear. The panic of losing control subsided and her anger reinstated itself in full force.

“Is this some kind of feeble, _don’t shoot the messenger_ cry for mercy?” She drew her weapon and crossed the room at a brisk pace, just in time to pin him against the door he was trying to open enough to escape through. He let out a whimpering cry and tried to slip away from her, grasped for his own weapon, but halted his movements when Savannah planted the barrel of her gun under his chin. “That’s just not my style, Agent.”

“Please! Please… You asked for information, I gave it to you! I told you everything she passed along to us!” He squeezed his eyes shut as Savannah pressed the cold metal into his trembling chin. “This isn’t me! This isn’t my fault! Rumlow is doing this, not us! If you keep killing agents, you’re just—”

“God, you just can’t shut up.” Savannah jerked away from him and pulled the door open before he had even stepped away. He stumbled into her and she gave him a harsh shove. “Get out.”

 “Yes, Agent—”

He went tumbling into the hallway, onto his feet, and sprinted to the end of the hall. Just as he scrambled to turn the corner, she raised her weapon, cocked it, and shot him between the shoulder blades.

As he collapsed into a screaming heap on the stained, beige carpet, rage and calm fought for dominance inside Savannah. The release of tension that came with a gunshot always left her feeling simultaneously satisfied and wanting more. This time, there wasn’t a very long deliberation.

She stepped back into her room only to retrieve extra ammo and a second handgun. Hysteria had broken out on the floor above her, likely coming from the unsuspecting hotel guests that hadn’t yet been taken out.

 Savannah stepped in the middle of the man’s back that she’d shot as she turned the corner. He didn’t let out more than quiet groan, but for good measure, she fired two more bullets into his head. When she turned to continue down the hall, two more agents were frozen a few doors down.

 “King—” One of them started, raising his arms in defense.

 The other reached for his own weapon a moment too late.

 “Sorry,” Savannah said. She’d already pulled the trigger. “Not in the mood for conversation.”

 There was more trouble for her on the stairs—two women waiting for an ambush.

 One hurled herself over the railing above Savannah, gun in hand, and the other came barreling down the stairs with a knife. Savannah dodged the falling agent and caught her in a vice-grip before she could find her feet.

 “Thanks,” Savannah hissed, before she twisted the woman’s neck at a fast and unnatural angle.

 Savannah shifted the now-limp and gurgling agent in her arms, took hold of the hand that still gripped her gun, and fired four shots into the second agent before she made it to the bottom of the stairs.

 She took what she liked from their bleeding bodies and moved on.

 By the time she made it to the next floor, chaos had broken out. Guests and agents alike alternated between fleeing and confronting her. Three separate men tried to disarm her and met unfortunate ends by way of the  knife she’d lifted off from the dead woman on the stairs.

 She unloaded a few more rounds into the heads and torsos of panicked guests peeking out of their hotel rooms, reloaded, and took out three more of her own agents before things went quiet.

 “King!”

 Savannah stopped short of the doorway that would take her to the next stairwell. She turned with a smile on her face and raised her weapon.

 “Savannah. Stop this.”

“Ah, Ramos,” Savannah uttered. She turned her full focus to the tall woman standing at the end of the hall. “Do me a favor, won’t you?”

 “What are you _doing_? This isn’t the way—”

 Savannah turned her head away and wiped a streak of blood from her hand onto her jeans.

 “Get ahold of Malveaux.”

 “I’ve been trying.” Ramos took a step toward her, trying to reason with her. _No reason here. Only killing. Only justice._ “Ever since we caught on to what Rumlow’s after, we’ve been trying to make contact.”

 “Fine. Then try again.” Savannah nodded slowly and wiped the barrel of her gun on the hem of her t-shirt and tucked it into the pocket of her jacket. She traded it for a knife, which she would happily use on the next person to get in her way. “And when you get through to her, let her know I’m on my way.”

 


	18. 17.

**May 6, 2016.**

**Covert HYDRA Base.**

**Munich, Germany.**

 

_ “Eleven Wakandans were among those killed in a confrontation between the Avengers and a group of mercenaries…” _

_ “Victory at the expense of the innocent is no victory at all.” _

_ “They are operating outside of an above international law.” _

_ “What legal authority does an Enhanced individual like Wanda Maximoff have to operate in Nigeria?” _

Savannah let out a long breath and clicked off the television. The lobby was full of agents pretending to eat breakfast and sip their coffee, but all of their eyes flicked between her and the television, their food untouched. 

“Brock Rumlow is dead,” she said cooly. No one moved. If anything, the room somehow fell even  _ more  _ silent. “Good. No one cares.”

She rose from her chair and moved to the middle of the room, twirling the remote in her hands as she paced. 

“If we thought things were bad for these freaks after Tony Stark’s Ultron fiasco, this is their worst case scenario. This is their undoing.” She let out a snort of a laugh and turned the TV back on to flip through news stations displaying footage of the Nigeria incident. “The world is turning against them. Talking about how they need to be regulated. Stopped.”

Savannah turned to face the room, unable to hide her smile. 

“Destroyed.” 

“People have always said that,” someone muttered. Savannah turned toward the voice to see Agent Ramos sitting up straight in her chair. Unafraid, cold, collected. A complete contrast from nearly every other red-faced, sweating agent in the room. “Ever since the Battle of New York, people have blamed them. This isn’t new, King. Whatever you’re getting at, it’ll fail. We’re not strong enough to try this right now.”

Savannah smirked and took a few steps across the room toward Ramos. 

“That’s where you’re wrong, I’m afraid.”

She twirled the remote control a few more times in her hand before she turned off the TV and gently set it on the closest table.    


“ _ People _ have always said these things. These ideas aren’t new, you’re right. But this…” She gestured to the blank television screen. “This is the first time the  _ world  _ is saying it. Collectively.”

“HYDRA isn’t strong enough to try to take them down,” Ramos said. Her chin was cocked upward in defiance. A warm burst of anger blossomed in the bit of Savannah’s stomach, but she didn't do anything more than clench her fists. “Because that’s all we could do. Try. And we’d fail. Without Pierce, without Rumlow, without the Asset, we don’t have any meaningful direction. We don’t have purpose.”

“Oh, I’m hurt,” Savannah mused, leaning heavily on the back of another agent’s chair. “We have great direction. We are  _ burdened _ with purpose. Now that the base in Berlin has fallen apart, they’ll flock here. We’ll be stronger. Strong enough to take out the freaks and retrieve the Asset. Then—”

“Our purpose is the Asset, then.” Ramos stood from her seat and crossed her arms. “What happens when he resists you? When we don’t have the resources or facilities to keep him subdued? He kills us all?” 

Savannah scoffed. The room shifted. One collective shuffle of discomfort washed over the room of agents. She could practically hear them screaming at Ramos to stop if she wanted to live. She reveled in it. 

“I will handle the Asset.”

“Will you? Because you’ve had plenty of chances and you haven’t  _ handled _ any of them very well.” She spread her arms and shrugged. “Look, I’m sorry. I know this is something you wanted. I know the Asset and HYDRA mean the world to you—”

Heat rushed to Savannah’s face. Her right arm twitched, but she restrained herself from reaching for her gun. So many agents had died already. She needed to wait for another wave of them to come in before she started killing more. 

“Don’t make this sound sentimental. It’s not. This is about a bigger picture. A better world—”

“We’re all on board with that vision. We are all just as loyal to HYDRA as—” 

Savannah couldn’t control herself any longer. She drew her weapon and aimed squarely for the other woman’s forehead. There wasn’t any shuffling. Not even the sound of breath. If Savannah didn’t know better, she might’ve thought she and Ramos were the only ones in the room. 

“Don’t,” Savannah hissed. “Don’t you dare tell me we’re all equal here! That you’re all  _ just as loyal. _ What is that bullshit? Half of these people were recruits from S.H.I.E.L.D. and a quarter of them have continued to serve those  _ parasites _ !”

“Savannah—” 

She took a step forward, chest heaving. Her vision swam with stars as her anger reached a rolling boil. 

“I have been coordinating surveillance on the Asset for over two years! Alone!” She was screaming now, waving her weapon wildly as she did. That was the only thing that made the other agents in the room flinch. “Don’t tell me we’re equals here. I have been putting in all the work and you can’t even make contact with Malveaux.”

Ramos looked rocked for a moment, as if she were confused by Savannah’s statement or the direction of the conversation. 

“Her phone is out of service, King. There’s nothing I can do short of going there myself and dragging her back here.” 

“No need.” Savannah cocked her weapon and took a step closer.  “I’ll do it myself.” 

It was the first time Ramos faltered. A moment too late, she drew her own weapon. Savannah had already pulled the trigger. The gunshot sent a wave of panic across the room. The agents surrounding her finally broke out of their daze and fled. 

Instead of chasing them down or shooting them where they stood, Savannah stayed planted in the middle of the room and watched blood seep from Agent Ramos—the last symbol of resistance to her leadership. Savannah had let her survive as long as she could. Truthfully, she enjoyed some competition, some arguing, but the confrontation in front of all of her agents had been the last straw. 

Ramos had made the mistake of trying to humanize Savannah, sympathize with her, define her feelings toward HYDRA and Barnes as something that was sentimental rather than tactical. She had to be eliminated. Inaction would only reinforce resistance, and that was unacceptable. Ramos had to go. 

Malveaux and the Asset would be next. She would bring them back to HYDRA, dead or alive, in pieces or in body bags. Whatever it took to regain control, Savannah King would do it. 

  
  
  



	19. 18.

**May 6, 2016.**

**New Avengers Base.**

**Upstate New York.**

 

  
“Rumlow said 'Bucky'... and all of the sudden I was a sixteen-year-old kid again in Brooklyn.” Steve sighed heavily and planted himself on the bed beside Wanda. “And people died. It’s on me.”

Wanda nodded a bit and cast her eyes to the floor. “It’s on both of us.”

“This job…” He blew out a short breath and looked at his hands. “We try to save as many people as we can. Sometimes that doesn’t mean everybody. But if we can’t find a way to live with that, then next time… Maybe no one gets saved.”

Steve looked up just as Wanda opened her mouth and began to respond, but their focus on the conversation was broken by Vision’s sudden appearance beside them.

“Vis!” Wanda yelped. “We talked about this.”

Steve furrowed his brow as he struggled to imagine how that conversation came about, and what it meant about Vision’s tendency to come and go through walls and floors rather than doorways.

“Yes, but the door was open so I assumed that…” The purple android dropped to his feet from and sighed, motioning awkwardly. “Captain Rogers wished to know when Mr. Stark was arriving.”

His heart caught in his throat. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but for some reason he thought they had more time before Tony’s arrival.

“Thank you,” he said. “We’ll be right down.”

“I’ll… use the door.” Vision crossed the room and turned back before he was out of the room. “Oh, and apparently he’s brought a guest.”

Steve held back an exasperated sigh. _A guest._ “We know who it is?”

“The Secretary of State.”

Wanda and Steve watched in silence as Vision awkwardly made his way out of the bedroom. Steve's stomach was in knots. He guessed that Wanda was feeling the same, if not worse. The newsreels were still playing in the back of his head, but he’d need to put them aside and deal with Secretary Ross in a matter of minutes. He wasn’t looking forward to it. The look on Wanda’s face suggested she was going through something similar. 

"Are you all right?" she asked.

Steve was surprised by her question. All he could do was turn and look at her in confusion for a long moment.

"Am I... Yeah, I'm fine, Wanda. Are—Are _you_ all right? We were talking about you. Are you sure you're still up for this meeting? I can just tell them—”

"You look... strange," Wanda said. Her eyes were searching Steve's face. It made him squirm. He must’ve made an even stranger expression because she snorted and laid a gentle hand on his arm. "No, not like that. It's just... I've never heard you talk about him before, your friend. You go somewhere else when you talk about him, almost like you’re going back to a different time. It’s… strange."

"Oh." Steve cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck. "It's not... it doesn't..."

Could he really say it didn't matter? They had just been talking about why the entire disaster in Nigeria had been his fault because of Rumlow and Bucky. Everything had almost gone so well. They had almost made it out with devastating an entire group of innocent people. But Rumlow had won. He'd hit Steve unexpectedly in just the right place, and it had nearly cost them everything.

It still could still cost Wanda everything.

"Tell me about him," Wanda said. She scooted over to the edge of the bed until her legs were swinging beside Steve's. "Start from the beginning."  
Steve snorted and averted his eyes, an unfamiliar heat crawling up his neck and into his cheeks.

"I don't know if we have time for that. Maybe another day. Thank you. We'd better get downstairs."

Despite his words, neither of them moved. Steve remained still with eyes trained on the floor. He could still feel Wanda's gaze.  
"Look… we're all shaken up," Steve said, his voice a bit fried.

He didn't remember what he'd wanted to say next. Any of his own words were being overridden by Rumlow’s.

_Your pal, your buddy, your Bucky._

_He got all weepy about it, right before they put his brain back in a blender._

There was a good chance that Rumlow was lying. That throwing Steve off and ruining the mission by making emotional jabs was the plan all along. There was no way to know. Steve wasn’t sure he’d ever stop wondering. If he’d ever find Bucky in time to find out. 

"Yes," Wanda said, patient as ever. "And you're in pain. So tell me about him."

Steve glanced at the time. The burning in his throat made him want to get up and leave. The warmth in Wanda's voice kept him planted where he was. It took him a few moments to collect his thoughts. He didn't think he wanted to tell the story from the beginning.

 _Not here. Not now._ Not before he had to face Tony and the others. Not with Wanda, who had already been through so much.

"There's not much to say," he managed.

Wanda scoffed and turned toward him. "Somehow, I doubt that's true."

Steve fought off a smile and tangled his hands together, studying the dirt that he hadn't managed or bothered to clean from beneath his nails.

"We were friends since the beginning. Almost before I can remember." He looked up and stared absently at Wanda's various posters across the room. He was glad she'd found a home in Tony’s new base. He was still struggling to settle down in the wake of Ultron, search parties, and now the Nigeria incident. "It's hard to find parts of my life that he wasn't a part of.”

Steve faltered.

"Well, you know, not until recently. The last few years, obviously..." His chin fell back to his chest. “All the digging, searching, you know—”

"It’s been hard."

He tried not to laugh at that, but something that resembled a chuckle slipped past his lips.  
  
"Yeah," he said. "But not because of that. Not _just_ because of that. I mean, look at everything that's happened."  
  
“It would be much easier to process if you had someone by your side. Someone who understands.” Steve felt her shift. “Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes that’s how I feel about these things, but there’s no way to know.”  
  
Steve looked up to see that Wanda was now the one who was staring absently across her bedroom. It was the first time he’d noticed a picture frame sitting on her dresser. The crumpled, faded photo was much too small for its frame and it sat awkwardly in the middle. It was a photo of the entire Maximoff family. Wanda, Pietro, their parents.  
  
A new wave of sickness and pain knotted up in Steve's stomach. He wanted to apologize. Over and over and over... It wasn't fair.  
  
"Yeah," he replied instead. "Yeah, maybe."  
  
That sat in silence for several more moments. Steve stared at his hands while Wanda seemed to take in the decor of her own bedroom. They both looked back at each other at the same moment.  
  
"His death was not your fault either, Steve." Before he could say anything else or question what she meant, Wanda went on. "Pietro sacrificed himself to save people who deserved to be saved. He was just doing the job. It will haunt me for the rest of my life. But I don't blame anyone. Least of all any of you."  
  
The burning in Steve's throat was starting to return. He didn't want to go downstairs to be subjected to Secretary Ross. He'd rather sit and talk with Wanda who, strangely, seemed to understand.  
  
"Brock Rumlow was not your fault. Whatever happened to your friend wasn't, either."  
  
_I wish you knew how wrong you were._  
  
The image of Bucky's fall still haunted him, even now. The end of S.H.I.E.L.D. had reopened old wounds and administered fresh ones. Seeing what HYDRA had done to his best friend had given Steve’s mind a whole slew of memories, new and old, to torture himself with.

"It's like you said," she said as she pushed herself off the bed. Steve followed her with his burning eyes. "You can't save everyone. Luckily, there is still time to save quite a few."Almost on cue, Steve’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He jumped and fumbled for it, more than a little surprised to see Alina’s number displayed there.

“Stark trying to hurry us along?” Wanda chuckled from the doorway. “Tell him we’re coming.”

“No, uh, but I need to take this. I’ll—” He was already pressing the phone to his ear as a new ball of panic dropped to the pit of his stomach. “Can you just tell—”

Wanda was clearly confused about who could possibly be calling him that was so urgent. Nevertheless, she nodded and pulled her bedroom door just behind her. Steve was on his feet almost before the latch clicked. 

“Hey,” he said quietly, out of habit. “What’s—Are you—Is everything okay?”

“Am I okay? You’re joking, right?”

He stuttered, only to be interrupted.

“I’m fine. I’m not the one on the news.” There was the clank of dishes in the sink and running water. “This is insane. I thought things were bad after Ultron, but this is a new low. They realize you’re literally saving the world, right? How can they talk about you guys like this? Like you’re some kind of public menace?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s… Just hang on a second.”

Steve’s nausea was starting to wash over him again. He started to lower himself back onto Wanda’s bed, but thought better of it and headed into the hallway. Alina was quiet while he managed to get himself to the first floor and out a back exit of the base without being noticed.

The fresh air didn’t help the way he’d wanted it to, but it was better than nothing.

“I’ve never seen it like this,” Alina went on. “In all my years in S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA, I never thought I’d see this kind of Anti-Enhanced rhetoric resurface in the public. I thought the general population was starting to understand.”

Steve was still silent, pacing up and down the backside of the building, trying to focus on the movement of his feet, Alina’s voice, and nothing else.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Alina said. Her voice was suddenly much softer. Steve closed his eyes and leaned against the cold wall, phone gripped tightly in his hand. “What… What are you gonna do? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Steve said through grit teeth. “I don’t know what we’re doing yet. We’re supposed to be having a meeting with Stark and the Secretary of State about these Accords. I don’t know anything about them yet.”

Alina scoffed reproachfully. “I can tell you they were developed much too quickly to be a complete document. Ask questions, Steve. Read it through. They’re expecting compliance. I know that’s not really your thing… but please, just… be careful with these people.”

“Always.” Steve mustered something like a laugh and turned back toward the door. He looked up and almost lost his balance when he was met with Natasha’s shock of red hair standing on the other side of the glass. “Ah, I should probably—”

“Duty calls.”

“Sure does,” Steve said as Natasha stepped outside. “Oh, how is she?”

“Good,” Alina said. Steve heard a door close and television chatter in the background. “Good, but tired. I’m actually just coming back from lunch. Figured I’d sit with her and watch some _Family Feud_ while she falls asleep for the afternoon.”

Steve nodded, mostly at Natasha, who was watching him with a crooked smile.

“She’ll like that,” he said. “I’ll check in later.”

“Please do. I look forward to developments of this incredibly fucked up story.”

Steve chuckled and lowered his phone, his focus falling back to Natasha. “Sorry, I’m coming.”

“No worries,” she said. “Don’t tell them I said this, but some things are more important than Ross and Stark. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it was just, ah, one of Peg’s nurses.” He nodded and couldn’t help but smile at the hint of disbelief in Natasha’s eyes before she turned away to head back inside. “She’s good.”

“Good. We should visit soon. You, me, and Sam.” She paused as if she were considering what to add to that. “Barnes, too. I bet she’d get a kick out of that.”

“God, Nat.” Steve was rocked by the sudden mention of Bucky, but tried to laugh off his shock. “I don’t know if we could do that to her, it might just kill her.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. She’s a toughy.” Natasha turned to him, her face stoic and eyes wide. “Are you ready for this meeting?”

“Are any of us?”

Natasha shook her head like she was shaking off an unpleasant thought. “I guess that’s fair. I just… don’t know what to expect. I guess I was wondering if you do.”

Steve looked away from her, toward the staircase that would lead them into the firestorm they were both hoping to avoid. “A hell of a lot of blame. Misunderstanding. Pointing fingers. You know, typical Ross.”

Natasha scoffed. “Good, I guess that’s reassuring then. Nothing we can’t handle.”

Something was still strange about Natasha’s voice, about how hard she seemed to be looking at him—as if she was desperately trying to tell him something.

Steve didn’t have time to read into it or wonder what it was, if it was anything at all. It was time to face the fire.

  
  



	20. 19.

**May 10, 2016**

**Munich, Germany**

"We've got another hit," the agent said as he sat down across from Savannah, gripping his coffee mug tightly. "In the States. Doesn't look like Rumlow's crew."

He slid the folder across the table and glanced over his shoulder.

"Stop looking so goddamn paranoid," Savannah said as she took up the folder and slowly sipped her own drink. "You have no reason to be."

"Not to sound like a bitch—"

"Too late."

He scoffed and leaned back in his chair, clearly uneasy with the number of people milling through the open café and on the streets around them.

"Someone is systemically wiping out ex-agents. First it was Rumlow, now he's dead, who's to say he didn't have someone to pick it up when Rogers took him out?"

"Rogers did  _not_  take out Rumlow, first of all. You read the report. Come on, now." Savannah set her mug down on the marble table with a chuckle. "Second of all, you were right the first time. This isn't Rumlow, because he's dead, but it's also not his MO. At all."

"King—"

Savannah waved him off, her eyes still on the file he'd produced. "Even if he had someone picking up after him, he wouldn't have them waterboarding ex-HYDRA officers in their own homes. Guns, biological weapons, heavy machinery. The showy stuff. Sorry, did you forget we were talking about Brock Rumlow?"

" _No_ , I just—" He shook his head and clasped his hands on the table. When he spoke next, his voice was significantly lower, as if someone might hear him over the din of brunch. "You abandoned ship. We're more displaced and scattered than ever. We're... targets. And you're ready to just... brush it off? Just because Brock's dead?"

Savannah finally looked up at him and pushed her heavy-frame sunglasses into her hair. "When did I say that?"

"I—Sorry, I—"

"It's fine, I wouldn't expect you to see the glorious gift you've just delivered to me," Savannah said. She stood from her small metal chair and smoothed down the yellow sundress she'd chosen for the day. "We're going to find this sorry son of a bitch and suck him clean of whatever HYDRA resources he thinks he's gotten his hands on."

"Do you really think—"

"Yes, I do." She pushed in her chair and stuck the file back under her arm. "I'm sick of the subtleties. Chasing leads, getting nowhere. These Accords are the perfect time to strike. We might not get a better opportunity to simultaneously tear them apart and retrieve the Asset."

She turned away from their table and shouldered her way into a cluster of strangers without looking back to see if her agent was following. It would be soon enough that she wouldn't need him anymore. She wouldn't need any of them.

Soon, all she would need was the man who seemed to be ambitious, bold, and stupid enough to hunt down HYDRA officers and murder them in their own homes. There were only a few things he could be motivated by, and it was Savannah's hope that they were after the same thing.

Though she didn't have enough information on him yet, Savannah knew he was the key to her victory. 


	21. 20.

**May 12, 2016**

**Bucharest, Romania**

_"What authority does an Enhanced individual like Wanda—"_

Bucky ducked out of the café the moment he stepped foot inside. He couldn't stand hearing the news, hearing the way the world was talking about the Avengers. Talking about Steve and his friends.

_Reckless, out of control, shameful, disrespectful._

As far as Bucky knew, half of those things were true. He had to wonder if half of  _everything_  on the news was the truth. He found it hard to doubt. There were no further details about the Lagos incident aside from the sentence that had been repeating on a loop for weeks since the incident went down: "a confrontation between the Avengers and a group of mercenaries."

It had to be them. Steve was still on their tail, looking for Brock Rumlow, looking for leads, and looking for him.

Bucky couldn't think of anything else that made sense. From the limited knowledge he had of the situation, it seemed as though the whole team hadn't been engaged in Nigeria. It was the same core trio he'd seen in Geneva—Steve, Sam, and Natasha. And now, apparently, a new Enhanced named Wanda Maximoff.

According to the news, she was the one who had compromised the mission and killed eleven Wakandans. Part of Bucky wanted to be just as angry as them. Something deep inside him even wanted to kill her for what she'd done. Not for disturbing the peace, not for killing Wakandans. No. He didn't care about any of that.

The Nigeria incident with Steve and his team had stirred up new trouble for Bucky, even as far removed as he was. Old newsreels were being circulated again, footage of the helicarriers falling from the sky, of Sokovia crashing back to Earth. With all that seemed to come new eyes on Bucky. He didn't doubt that rumors of the Winter Soldier had started circulate, too, especially if the media was throwing around the term "mercenary group."

Dark alleys seemed darker, rooftops were points of paranoia again, and earlier that day he'd violently collided with a man who didn't do anything but stare at him as they parted ways. He couldn't help but feel like it was starting again. The fear. The chase. The running that never seemed to stop.

He didn't want to, but he couldn't stop thinking about how long it would take them to figure out where he was staying. As he walked the open street, Bucky wondered who they were this time.

_HYDRA? Savannah? The Avengers? Steve? The US government? Or some other entity entirely?_

_Stop. Not now. Don't lose it right now._

There was a fruit stand just ahead of him. He set his eyes on that, letting the anxiety leave his mind for a moment. The fact that he was able to put so many things together in coherent thoughts was a good sign. Maybe it meant that the "memory foods" and meditation were working.

_Pull out your wallet. Make small talk about the ripe fruit. Act like a normal, amiable human. Walk away with your purchase._

Bucky took a deep breath and turned back to the street. Sirens wailed in the distance, and the reflex to run lurched in the pit of his stomach. One of many that he hadn't quite kicked. An ambulance passed him, then a cop car, without slowing down. He let out his breath.

_It's fine. Just get home. It's—_

A man across the street was staring at him. He looked from the newspaper in his hand to Bucky and then back again. In a moment, he was gone, running out of his newsstand with a cell phone pressed to his ear.

Bucky's heart raced. He crossed the street, trying to keep his breathing even.

_A misunderstanding. Everyone's jumpy because of these Accords, because of the Avengers and Nigeria. The police will tell him not to worry. He'll realize he's being—_

He picked up the newspaper with a trembling hand, his brow furrowed deeply. A wave of horror washed over him, started drowning him.

_The Winter Soldier. UN bombing._

_It's a grainy picture. It could be anyone. It's not me. I know it's not me, but no one else..._

More sirens.

Bucky felt like he was being torn in half. He knew he needed to run, leave right then and never look back. They'd never stop looking for him, not now.

He knew it had to be Savannah, or HYDRA, or whatever was left of her scheme. And still, all he wanted was to shut down. Give up. Throw himself into the street and scream until someone took him away if it meant he didn't have to face her again.

Instead, he ran. Or, rather, took off at a brisk pace down the street, through the quietest way he knew back to his apartment. All he could do was keep his head down and hope they weren't already there waiting for him. 


	22. 21.

**May 13, 2016**

**Abandoned Warehouse**

**Berlin, Germany**

Bucky shifted slowly, only to find that his entire body resisted the action. His head hurt the most, a dull throbbing in his forehead.

_Something happened._

The fatigue that he felt all the way down to his bones was all too familiar. It slowly came back to him. Steve had been waiting for him at his apartment in Bucharest. The chase through the city, the man in the panther suit, the police. The containment chamber they'd strapped him into for the drive to Germany.

_Jesus._

The last thing he remembered was the psychiatrist, that god damn notebook, the power going out. Everything else was in pieces. He knew there was a fight with Steve. Tony was there. Water. He was still damp. It was then that Bucky started to come around. He opened his eyes and tried to move again, only to find that his left arm was trapped in a tightly closed vise.

_God, what did I do?_

"Hey, Cap!"

Bucky groaned and looked up. His vision was blurry, but it slowly came back to him. Steve appeared beside Sam, a deep furrow in his brow.

_This is bad. Worse than I thought._

"Steve..."

"Which Bucky am I talking to?"

Bucky stared blankly ahead for a moment, still trying to pull himself back together. Steve didn't trust him. He had every reason not to, given whatever had happened.

"Your mom's name was Sarah." He couldn't help but chuckle as a whole slew of fragmented memories came back to him. Good ones. Warm ones. "You used to wear newspapers in your shoes."

Steve's face softened. "Can't read that in a museum."

"Just like that, we're supposed to be cool?" Sam scoffed and folded his arms. Bucky didn't blame either of them for being skeptical.

"What did I do?"

"Enough," Steve said.

"Oh, God, I knew this would happen," Bucky said shakily. "Everything HYDRA put inside me is still there. All he had to do was say the goddamn words."

"Who was he?"

"I don't know."

"People are dead. The bombing, the setup, the doctor did all that just to get ten minutes with you," Steve said as he started to pace. "I need you to do better than 'I don't know.'"

Steve was clearly losing his grip, but he remained patient and calm. Bucky was grateful for that, at least. He took a moment to try to remember. There was the notebook, the trigger words, but what had come before that? What had the conversation been? It hit him all at once.

"He wanted to know about Siberia," Bucky said, meeting Steve's eyes. "Where I was kept. He wanted to know exactly where."

"Why would he need to know that?"

Bucky shook his head. A sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. He knew this would happen. It was the only natural course of events if HYDRA and its splinter groups couldn't be taken down before it was too late. It was only a matter of time before the wrong person got the right information, and Bucky knew that now was that time. As much as he hated to even consider it, he was sure he knew who the person was behind all this was, too.

"Buck," Steve said. "Why?"

"Because I'm not the only Winter Soldier."

Bucky told them as much as he remembered about the facility where it all went down. There had to be at least six more Soldiers, from what he knew. His memories of that time were vivid but broken. He remembered trying to fight off each and every one of the newly Enhanced individuals, that it had all went South far too quickly to be managed.

Somehow, the Soldiers were subdued and contained after the initial incident of insubordination. HYDRA resorted to only using Bucky. He was the one they had the most control over, and for that reason, the most useful. As far as Bucky knew, those Soldiers were still in containment in Siberia. It made sense why some HYDRA fanatic would want their hands on them. It made even more sense if that fanatic was Savannah King.

"Who were they?" Steve asked. He'd settled down with the pacing and was now leaning against a wall with his arms crossed.

"Their most elite death squad," Bucky said. "More kills than anyone in HYDRA history, and that was before the serum."

"They all turn out like you?" Sam cut in.

"Worse," Bucky said without missing a beat.

"The doctor," Steve said as he threw a sideways glance at Sam. "Could he control them?"

"Enough," Bucky said.

He glanced down at his metal arm and flexed the fingers. He didn't remember at what point in the conversation Steve had released him from the vise.

"He said he wanted to see an empire fall," Steve said as he and Sam shared a glance.

"With these guys, he could do it," Bucky said without missing a beat. "They speak thirty languages, can hide in plain sight. Infiltrate, assassinate, destabilize. They can take a whole country down in one night, you'd never see them coming."

Sam stepped between Steve and Bucky. They talked together quietly for a moment until a shrill sound rang out through the entirety of the dank, dusty warehouse. Gunshot. Bucky was on his feet in a moment, but it all happened too fast for him to engage at all. Before he could even call out a warning to Steve and Sam, the butt of a pistol cracked across the back of his neck and he was on the ground again, head spinning and vision momentarily gone.

"What the—" Sam said as he began to turn around.

Before he or Steve could make a move, Savannah King had sprung across the room and knocked him to the ground, too. Steve started to move forward, but skidded to a stop when Savannah delivered a sharp kick to Sam's head and turned her gun on him.

"Sergeant Barnes," Savannah said with a tilt of her head. Steve was staring wide-eyed between the two of them, clearly trying to make the connection on his own. "Oh, it looks like you haven't told your friend all about me? That's too bad, because I don't exactly have time to catch him up to speed. Much more important things to discuss."

"Steve Rogers," Steve said, voice tinged with anger. "You are?"

"Savannah King," she said. "Glad we're finally meeting. I can't tell you how important it is for me to personally rip sweet Sergeant Barnes right out of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s slimy little hands."

"That's not what's happening here," Bucky said. He coughed and pushed himself off the floor, keeping sharp eye contact with Steve.  _Don't move. Don't speak. Let me handle it._  "I'm not coming with you. It's over."

"Oh, it's hardly over, Sarge." She rotated slowly until their eyes met, her pistol still aimed squarely at Steve's face. "Zemo, the bombing, your little Soldier episode earlier. I'm just getting started. Now, you're going to help us get those friends of yours out of Siberia. You're going to help me with them, and HYDRA is going to get a new start."

"I'm not coming with you," Bucky said. He kept his eyes on Steve and his thoughts on Brooklyn, the Fourth of July, laughter, late nights in Steve's basement after his parents had died. Bits and pieces he'd worked so hard to get back. He wouldn't let her face or her voice take him. All he had to do was keep looking at Steve, keep his eye on that one last piece of himself that staved off the static fighting to get to the forefront of his mind. "That's not happening. Not now. Not ever."

"Everyone else is dead, Soldier." He heard her draw in a long, shaking breath. The rage practically radiated off from her. "Rumlow, Pierce, Sitwell. They're all dead and it's because of your friend and his friends. You belong to us, and you will return to HYDRA with me, even if it's with a bullet in your head."

Bucky clenched his teeth as Steve shook his head furiously. He let his gaze drift to Savannah, her face set in hard lines and angles. The hand that held her gun was steady as ever, same as her stare.

"I would rather you kill me here and fight for my dead body than go with you willingly anywhere," Bucky spat. His ears began to ring. He winced and closed his eyes, just for a moment, just long enough to get a grip. "Rogers isn't a danger to you. Lower your weapon."

"You're fighting it," Savannah said, a new edge to her voice. "Don't. Don't fight it, Soldier. Don't fight what you're supposed to be. Don't let these small-minded puppets corrupt you. Don't let them interfere with our cause."

"Stop," Bucky said. A shiver ran across his skin. He hated the shakiness his voice, the weakness. She wouldn't get him. She couldn't win.  _Not now. Not after all this. You've hurt enough people today. Get a grip._  "Leave. Now. Before someone gets killed."

"Oh, don't be silly. I didn't come here to kill you." Her eyes twinkled with something much more sinister than the smirk on her face. "Not if you cooperate. I  _will_  kill you if that's what it takes, but I'd much rather fix you. Make you better. Don't think we can't make you better. There's always room for improvement, especially with machines like you. Our most valuable asset."

Bucky's body was as tight as a rubber band, stretched to its limits, trembling, threatening to break as every moment passed, begging for a release of tension. His breath came in short, ragged puffs. The radio static between his ears was getting louder, threatening to drown out everything else. He was running out of options.

"You're insane," Steve said. Bucky twitched at the sound of his voice but didn't dare move.

"Maybe," Savannah said with a tilt of her pistol. It glimmered in the limited light of the dusty warehouse. "I keep hearing that. Haven't decided if it's true yet."

"It definitely is," Bucky said. His voice was ragged, exhausted, as took three slow steps forward. He repeated himself, quieter. He needed Steve to understand how unhinged this woman was. "It definitely is."

_She'll kill us both. She believes in this. Stop talking._

Steve didn't seem to catch the edge in his voice.

"There are other Soldiers in Siberia. Why not go straight for them?" Steve asked. Bucky's focus on Savannah broke for a moment and he shot Steve a hard glare, but his gaze went back to Savannah immediately. "Wouldn't that be easier than this? Than forcing someone who won't do anything but fight you, maybe even kill you?"

"No." Savannah tightened her grip on her firearm, her jaw flexing. "We want him. He's ours, we created him, crafted him—"

"You didn't do anything but torture him into submission, and you still failed!"

Steve managed to dodge the first bullet, but Bucky didn't move fast enough to stop the second one. Blood trailed behind them as they both ran for cover. It was deeper than just a graze. Bucky pushed Steve backward, warding off the shower of bullets with his metal arm until they were out of the line of fire. Before he could fully process what was happening, he had pushed Steve to the ground and pressed a knee into his chest.

"Stop talking." The metal arm pushed into the middle of Steve's chest as Bucky propped himself up. Steve started to sit, but Bucky pushed his shoulders back down. "Stay down. You're hurt."

Steve glanced at his right shoulder, scoffed, and tried to sit up again. "Where is she?"

"Hiding," Bucky said. He rotated the metal arm and cracked his human knuckles. His beady, blue eyes darted around the room. "Listening, calculating." His eyes fell back on Steve's, burned into them. "She'll kill you. She's toying with both of us, but she will put a fucking bullet in your head if she thinks that's what needs to happen."

"Why would she think that?" Steve backed up into the wall, gripping his shoulder. He leaned heavily against the cold concrete. Bucky's eyes darted across him. He was hurt, and worse than he would admit. "You wouldn't—"

"You don't have the shield?"

"No, I don't have anything." Steve shook his head. He said it again, as if the realization was fully washing over him. "I don't have... anything."

Sirens blared somewhere outside, louder and closer than they had been in a while. Steve and Bucky both started at the sound of footfalls against the cement floor. Bucky threw Steve a sideways glance.

"Will you listen to me this time when I tell you to shut up and stay down?"

The two shared a short, knowing glance that was gone as quickly as it passed over their faces.

"Go. I'll..." Steve glanced around at the barren walls. "I'll figure something out."

Before Steve could say more, Bucky had descended back into the shadows, silent as ever. He slinked around the perimeter of the building, his eyes scanning the shadows for any signs of movement. There was nothing. He ventured out into the open spaces, surveying the rafters, underneath broken pieces of vehicles that were scattered throughout the room.

Nothing.

Still solidly shaken, he returned to the dark corner where he'd left Steve. He was still there, clutching his shoulder and leaning against the wall.

"She's gone," Bucky said. He licked his lips. "For now. For some reason."

Steve nodded and glanced down at his shoulder. "Through and through. It'll be fine."

Bucky shook his head and scratched his chin. "Let's get Sam and get moving."

It was all they could do for now.

"Leipzig," Steve said as they slowly made their way back to Sam's unconscious body. Bucky stopped short before he could ask the question, Steve went on. "There's a quinjet there. Don't worry about where that information came from. All I can tell you is that it's reliable and there's someone waiting there for us. We need to get to Siberia before either of them."

"Can't argue with that," Bucky said. "I do have to ask who the hell is waiting there for us, though."

Steve glanced around the warehouse, clearly worried, and for good reason. Bucky wasn't sure if she was really gone, either.

"Let's just get there. I'll explain after."


	23. 22.

**May 13, 2016**

**Abandoned HYDRA Facility**

**Siberia**

Savannah had made it through the front doors with ease. Everything had already been opened or otherwise unlocked, which could mean only one thing. He was already there.

Zemo's plans to tear the Avengers apart was an admirable one, ambitious as it was. If Savannah didn't have bigger and more pressing things to concern herself with, she might have even considered speeding up the process for him. However, she did have more pressing things to attend to, and she found it only slightly unfortunate that he had to die.

She readied her weapon as she walked deeper into the cold, dark corridors. The place was truly untouched, and probably had been since the last installation of HYDRA had been set up there. By the sound of the Asset's story, that could have been as recent as the 90's. 

Savannah's stomach twisted at the thought of Rogers and Barnes. 

She had gone into that warehouse with the intention to shoot anyone standing between her and retrieval of the Asset, even if that meant bringing him back to HYDRA in pieces. She'd been lucky to catch him in the middle of disclosing all the information he had on the other Soldiers and it had thrown her off. 

Everything that she believed that Rumlow had tried to downplay had been true. Everything Zemo had to say about the Soldiers and Siberia had been true. That was enough for her to leave behind the Asset and get to Siberia before Rogers and his team could do anything to stop either of them.

Savannah stepped off the rickety elevator and into a wide open room. It felt quieter than the rest of the spaces she'd passed through. She was in the right place. Her chest filled up with a warmth that she wasn't sure she'd felt since first laying eyes on the Asset as she stepped into the middle of the room. An entire collection of Winter Soldiers. Six of them. The key to unlocking her victory.

"Agent King." Zemo's voice crackled from behind her, and Savannah turned quickly on her heel, eyes wide and heart racing. There was a small, grimy window near the entrance to the room. His face was framed there, smiling. "Good to you see you've made it here to watch the finale."

Savannah tilted her head, tightened her hand around her pistol. Something wasn't right. The silence in the room, the look on Zemo's face. There was a ringing in her ears, a pit in her stomach that she couldn't shake. 

Something was wrong. Completely, horribly, fundamentally wrong with this situation. She was in an open space, alone, while he was behind a wall, behind glass.

Had she fallen for a trap? Made a fatal miscalculation? Now? After everything?

She turned slowly, back towards the cryogenic containment tanks that stood washed in a dirty, yellow light. Her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes burned and she could do nothing but continue to turn slowly and stare in horror at the one detail she had failed to notice before.

Every single tank, every single Soldier, had at least one minuscule hole in them. Bullet holes.

"You..." Savannah's voice shook, her vision began to blur, the ringing in her ears became deafening. "What did you do?"

"The right thing," Zemo said flatly. "The only thing."

As if it were a reflex, Savannah raised her gun and fired several shots at the dirtied image of Zemo's face. Each of the bullets bounced off the glass skittered back toward her feet. She marched across the room and smacked the glass with the butt of her pistol until the vibrations made her hand numb.

"You know as well as I do that this chamber was built to withstand the launch blast of UR-100 rockets, Agent King," Zemo said with a tight smile.

Savannah's teeth were grinding together, her eyes unable to stop flicking around the room, looking out for another miscalculation, another surprise. There were none, as far as she could tell. Her breath came in quick, painful puffs. For the first time in her entire search for the Asset, Savannah King felt exhausted.

"That... can be arranged," she managed to say, tears of rage welling up in her eyes.

"I doubt even your power to arrange something like that."

"Why?" Savannah shouted. "Why would you do this?"

"Did you really think I wanted more of him? More of you? More of HYDRA?" He scoffed and ran a hand through his hair. "Agent King, don't be naive."

"Yes! You..." She paused to take several deep breaths, but she couldn't slow them down. Her chest was still rising and falling far too quickly.

_Get it together._

"There was a plan. We had an arrangement. This all would've worked! We could've both had what we wanted and now—"

"And now you can see that you allowed yourself to be blinded by one singular goal. Too blind to even consider betrayal from someone who tells you they have a common goal. Too blind to double check." Zemo smirked and pressed his pointer finger to the glass. "This is on you, Agent. I will get what I want. I will take them down. What will you do?"

"Kill you," she said without hesitation. Her eyes burned into his. Her body vibrated with an unbridled rage that she hadn't felt in years. Usually, she could channel it into violence or some other productive outlet. But she'd be caught off guard. Betrayed. "As soon as you get out of that secret little room of yours, you're mine. I will kill you and anyone you care about. I'll kill Stark and Rogers and Barnes before you even get the chance to try. I won't stop until the entire world is ripped out from under you and then some."

"There's that naivety again. There is nothing left to take away from me. Only this." Zemo chuckled and took a step closer to his side of the glass, motioning vaguely to the room behind Savannah. "And you're already too late for that."

"It's never too late to destroy something," Savannah said. "You've demonstrated that flawlessly."

"Don't you watch the news? Haven't you seen that terrible incident at Leipzig with the Avengers?"

Savannah had seen it, heard people talking about it all the way to Siberia. Her face must have said as much.

"What do you think they were fighting about? Where Captain Rogers and his fugitive friends are trying to go?" Zemo's face broke out into a sinister grin. "Sure, there's nothing stopping you from killing me the moment I'm unprotected. We are both aware that you could tear them apart yourself, I'm sure. I've gotten the both of us this far. Allow me to finish this. Consider it back up."

"I don't need backup," Savannah snarled. "I needed the  _Soldiers_!"

"There are things bigger than HYDRA to worry about now," Zemo said. "Perhaps things like, what you'll do when your Asset and his guard dog arrive."

Savannah's breath hitched in her throat for a moment, as if she was finally hearing Zemo's words for the first time. 

Rogers was coming, which inevitably meant Barnes was, as well. Although Savannah didn't have the rest of the Soldiers, she could still get the Asset. She could still kill HYDRA's largest threat of being reestablished.

It wasn't ideal, and she'd certainly still torture and murder Zemo like he'd done to so many of their agents. It was better than nothing.

"That's more like it," Zemo said quietly, his back already turned. "I'll leave you to it, then?"

"Yes," Savannah murmured, her eyes wide and glassy, the gears in her mind already turning over all the different ways she could go about the things that were about to happen. "Yes, please do." 


	24. 23.

**May 13, 2016**

**Abandoned HYDRA Facility**

**Siberia**

"What you did all those years... it wasn't you."

"I know. But I did it."

Steve looked helplessly back at the snowy landscape that laid in front of them, then over at Alina in the co-pilot seat. She glanced between him and Bucky, who stood front his seat and moved to the back of the quinjet to prepare for their landing.

"He'll get there," she said softly, unsure she really even had a place in this conversation. "I wish you understood how much better he's already doing. It's amazing how well he's done on his own. If you can find some serious help for him after all this over, I have no doubt—"

"Let's make it out of this alive, first," Steve said. His face was set in hard lines as he maneuvered the plane toward the shadowy building they were coming up on.

Alina was prepared to drop it there, but after sitting in silence for a long moment, Steve spoke up again, his voice much more stripped and vulnerable than she had expected.

"Thank you for being here. For waiting through that mess at Leipzig." Steve set his jaw again and glanced over at her. "I know it couldn't have been easy to sit there on the sidelines, not knowing if we'd even make it to the quinjet, let alone out of that airport. Thank you for that, too. Trusting us. I couldn't risk your cover, too."

"Lucky for you, if Savannah is really waiting for us, my cover is the last thing you'll have to worry about," she said.

Steve landed the quinjet with ease. He stayed silent and still in his seat for a long moment.

"We haven't really discussed how this is going to happen," he said without looking at Alina. "Admittedly, I haven't thought about it enough. I've just been... going step-by-step. Crossing bridges when I get to them. I don't know what happens next."

Before she could answer, Bucky returned from the back of the quinjet with some sort of rifle strapped to his back and a grim look on his face.

"Easy," Bucky said. "If she's here, we kill her and hope she hasn't gotten the other Soldiers out of containment. If she has, we figure it out and probably fight for our lives. If it's just Zemo in there, we hope for the same thing and kill him if it comes to that."

Steve turned toward Alina with a raised eyebrow. "Sounds like a plan to me."

The moment the three of them stepped off the quinjet, a heavy silence fell over them. Alina had been right about Savannah and Zemo working together. There were two sets of tire tracks in the snow, two pairs of footprints.

"They're here," Steve murmured. "They're both here."

The discovery didn't seem to hit Bucky as hard. He was leading the way now, with Alina and Steve trailing behind him. 

Alina's stomach had been twisted up since she'd agreed to meet Rogers and Barnes in the quinjet, but a new feeling was beginning to creep up her throat and burn her eyes. Realization, and the terror that came with it.

Savannah had been trying to contact her for months. She'd threatened, called, texted, sent agents looking for her. Alina had evaded it all fairly successfully.

After all that, she would walk into an abandoned HYDRA base full of Winter Soldiers with the Asset and Captain America and face Savannah King. She would make her betrayal loud, clear, and concrete. 

She would seal her fate. Completely and undoubtedly guarantee her death.

She would do it without regret. She would do it knowing that it was the correct choice as much as it was her only choice.

"Alina." Steve's hand was on her elbow, pulling her gently backward. "Where'd you go?"

The cloud lifted from her mind and she looked up into Steve's worried expression.

"I'm alright. Just... trying to figure all this out." She glanced around and realized they were taking cover behind a wall just outside of a wide doorway. "We're compromised?"

"Not sure," Barnes said.

Alina looked in the direction of his voice, tried to get her bearings. They had reached the end of a long, dark hallway and Barnes was clearly trying to scope out the path ahead, into what seemed to be a wide open room.

"Look, if you need to hang back—"

Steve didn't get to finish his thought. He and Alina both had flattened against the cold concrete as several shots rang out and echoed off the solid walls.

"What the hell?" Alina gasped, reaching for her own weapon. "What—"

"He found her," Steve muttered and jumped to his feet. "Stay down. Wait for my signal."

**-**

Steve didn't know what to expect when he turned the corner. He didn't have much time to survey the room before the gunfire started again, and it was all he could do to retreat into the shadows until he could get a clear view of the situation. 

As he moved along the perimeter of the room, the sounds of combat became clearer. As far as he could tell, no one was dead. He sprinted down the length of the wall, concealed in shadow and behind metal crates. Finally, he got an eye on them.

There was blood on the floor, on her hands. They moved too quickly for Steve to make out much else. 

Things got quiet when Bucky landed a blow to Savannah's abdomen that dropped her to the ground. The most unsettling part of it wasn't the sound she made when she fell, but the snickering laughter that followed.

"You're still fighting it, Soldier."

Bucky took a step back and pushed his hair off from his forehead. He didn't have the rifle he'd walked in the room with. Just two pistols, both holstered.

"The cause is still waiting for you. Calling to you." Savannah grunted and pushed herself to her feet, her eyes much darker than they had been before. "Don't fight it."

"What _cause_?" Bucky let out an exasperated laugh and laid a hand on one of his guns. "Could you even tell me? Do you even remember what the hell all of this is for?"

"You used to believe in it, too." Savannah spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the cement floor and took a limping step closer to Bucky. The blood was hers. Shot through the leg. "I know you still do. I know it's still there because I  _put_  it there. You are the cause. You're all of it. That's why I'm here, that's why I'm trying to get you back from these... disgusting, weak, ordinary people. Because we're better. You're better."

Bucky shook his head just enough to send a wave of fury washing over Savannah's features. Steve tried his hardest not to move, not to breath. He couldn't let this go south. Savannah King was completely out of his depth. Everything about her was beyond his comprehension, but it was clear Bucky somehow knew how to handle her.

Even still, Steve saw how hard he shook. He wasn't the only one.

"Let down the wall they've built for you, Soldier. Stop fighting," she said, a new edge to her voice. "You don't need to lock yourself away anymore. Come out and help me finish this."

"Stop," Bucky said. A shiver ran across Steve's skin. He'd never heard something so close to terror in his best friend's voice. Never. "We did this already, in Germany. Leave. Now. Before someone gets killed. It'll be you, I can promise you that."

Savannah chuckled and pulled her gun from its holster and pointed it to Bucky's head without breaking eye contact.

"And I told you I didn't want to kill you, but I will. If that's what it takes to bring you back, it's what I'll do, Sarge." Her finger touched the trigger. Steve caught the tremble in her arm that hadn't been there before. She was tired. "I'd much prefer you by my side. I'd rather you let me fix you."

"I'd rather put a bullet in my head myself," Bucky said, reaching for his own weapon.

Steve saw what was about to unfold before Bucky had even completed the motion. Savannah seemed to as well, except Steve was relatively certain that she didn't know he was watching as closely as he was.

As Bucky went for his gun, Savannah fired hers, only for the bullet to ricochet off from Steve's shield that he'd thrown in its path. The shield clattered to the floor, which left the room in an eerie silence and gave Bucky enough time to finish drawing his weapon.

"I was wondering when you'd show up and rudely interrupt," Savannah said, her arm still locked in position to fire again. Her eyes were trained on Steve. "Earlier than I expected, really."

Steve kicked his shield and caught on it on the way up. He stole a glance back at Bucky, whose eyes were wide and glassy. His breath came in heaving, trembling breaths and his skin was a terrifying gray color. Steve wanted to send him back to Alina, pull him out of this. But it was his fight. This was about him. Bucky was what Savannah wanted, and pulling him out would do nothing but delay the inevitable firefight to come.

"This isn't your fight, Steve," Bucky said. He stepped between him and Savannah and tightened the grip he had on his gun. "Get out of here."

"Oh, that's so sweet." Savannah's voice was coated in venom. "He thinks he can save you from getting hurt. Same way you think there's any scenario that ends with you winning. How's the shoulder?"

"Good as new," Steve said through grit teeth. "How's that leg?"

Savannah's posture tightened at that, but she maintained her cold, icy smile.

"It was a cheap shot," she said. "Caught me off guard. Hit me from behind."

"Sounds like you shouldn't have let your guard down," Steve countered.

He and Bucky moved in one fluid motion when Savannah started shooting again. The first few shots were deflected with the metal arm, but Steve stepped in front of Bucky and blocked the rest with the shield. Over the sounds of her frustrated screaming and the gunfire, Bucky pulled Steve to a halt.

"Stop talking," was all Bucky said before he rolled away.

When he was upright again, he and Savannah exchanged blows until Bucky was able to get a firm grip on her arm and twist her firearm away from her. It clattered to the ground and was left behind as they continued to through the expansive room full of unmarked metal crates. Steve kicked the weapon backward, toward the door.

All he could hope was that Alina was still there and that she was of sound enough mind to be paying attention.

**-**

As much as Bucky didn't want to admit it, he was exhausted. His mind and body were on the brink of collapse, but he had to finish this. He had to end Savannah King and HYDRA.

He'd lost sight of Steve, but he didn't have time to look for him and keep a sharp eye on Savannah. Every few blows, she would slow down, grasp her injured leg, and laugh at him.

"How long do you really plan on holding onto this fight, Sarg?" She backed up and leaned against one of the larger containment units. "If you think I'll bleed out before I break you down, you are sorely and tragically mistaken."

Bucky let out a cry of frustration and kicked out at her injured leg, landing a blow that dropped her to the floor once again.

"Stand down," he growled. "Before I have to kill you."

"What are your other options, Soldier?" She sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth and spit blood. "Do you think HYDRA doesn't have connections in any government agency you'd try to hand me over to? Every prison you could think to lock me up in?"

Bucky took a sharp breath and clenched his fists. He'd save his energy for when he needed it. No use wasting it on mindless violence. There'd been enough of that.

"There's not a version of this where you win, Soldier. Whether you comply or not, I will take you back to HYDRA. You  _will_  guide this revolution." She worked her way to her feet again and raised her fists. "You can do it as a leader or a martyr. Your choice."

"You and your goddamn illusion of choice." Bucky scoffed and turned his back to her. "I'm not leaving this room with you. Make your move or stop bluffing."

"Fine."

The speed of her answer piqued Bucky's interest. He turned around slowly. The result was anticlimactic and more confusing than anything. Savannah pulled a square of paper from the back pocket of her jeans. She spoke as she worked at unfolding it.

"Zemo killed the other Soldiers," she said, sounding genuinely exasperated. "I didn't want it to come to this. You have to believe that."

"What are you—"

The first word hit Bucky in the chest like a brick and debilitated him from making any move against Savannah.

"Longing," she said, her tongue rolling seamlessly, viciously, over the Russian syllables. "Rusted. Furnace."

Bucky took a stumbling step backward, nearly collapsing into the containment unit behind him. 

The buzzing in his head had already started. He couldn't fight it. It had been such a short time since the episode in Berlin, he hadn't had time to build up any form of resistance. The wall had been broken down. The ancient, familiar, terrifying pathways in his mind were paved and ready to be activated for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.

"No," he muttered and closed his eyes tightly. "Please."

He tried to put her out of his mind, wash away Savannah King from his memory. Her face, her voice, all of her. She was stepping closer to him. He could hear her, feel her presence, smell the blood that coated her clothes and hands.

"Daybreak."

Bucky sucked in a sharp breath as she grabbed a handful of his hair and forced his face to tilt up toward hers. His eyes opened and immediately welled with tears at the sight of her so close to him. All of the pain, the torture, the electricity and chemicals she had run through his body. Over and over again. He'd always thought it would never end.

"Seventeen."

_It won't end. There is no end. HYDRA has no end._

"Benign."

"NO!" Bucky's vision began to fade. He tried to move forward, to do anything, but his movement was erratic, uncontrollable. He swung out wildly toward Savannah's body and missed every time. "Stop. STOP!"

He wasn't sure how much longer he could hang on to reality, to sanity. He was terrified of what she would ask him to do if she got to the end of the list. What he would wake up and be forced to remember.

"Nine."

What she would make him do to Steve. To Alina. To the rest of the Avengers.

"Homecoming."

To the rest of the world.

He was fading. The grip she had on his head loosened significantly. She was sure she had won. Maybe she had. He let his body relax. 

The only decision left to make was that he would kill himself as soon as this was over. As soon as she used him for whatever she wanted, he would wake up, remember, and then put an end to it.

"Bucky!"

_Steve._

"One."

His train of thought was slipping away from him like water between his fingers. He could practically feel the last words about to roll off from Savannah's lips, but they never came. It took what felt like lifetimes for Bucky to come around. When he did, it wasn't gradual. The sounds and the light and the smell of blood came all at once and he was on his feet before the rest of his body knew why.

_Steve._

_Alina._

Bucky scanned the room and moved on impulse. His body was doing any and all thinking, moving before his brain could even process where or why.

There had been gunfire, he knew that. Flinched at it, looked for its source. Alina had gotten Savannah on her back. Steve was nowhere in sight.

Bucky moved on Alina, brushed her aside with ease to get at Savannah, who looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. 

Somewhere inside him, he knew he had never seen her look afraid. Something inside him was glad that he had been the one to pull it out of her.

Was it him, Bucky Barnes? Or did she see the Winter Soldier in his face the way Bucky felt him just below the surface?

Bucky wound his bionic fingers into the front of Savannah's shirt and lifted her off the ground. He kept lifting until they were eye to eye. Hers were still afraid, but there was still a familiar coldness there. Bucky pulled her closer to him, maybe with the intention of spitting in her face or releasing venomous words to her. Neither of those things passed his lips.

Instead, Savannah leaned into him, blood running from her nose and mouth as she dangled there in his fist.

"Freight car."

**-**

Steve's stomach heaved as the last trigger word hung between Bucky and Savannah. He was frozen beside Alina, still crouched to attempt to help her up. She seemed just as still. Whatever Savannah had expected to happen next, it was clear she didn't see it in Bucky's eyes.

"Buck..." Steve said helplessly.

Before his name had even finished leaving Steve's lips, Bucky's left arm swung down faster than Steve had ever seen it move, especially not with a human being attached to it.

Savannah's body hit the floor with a sickening crunch that left a crack in the solid cement. Steve reflexively ran to Bucky's side with Alina close behind.

The sight before them was a gruesome one. Savannah was still alive, still breathing, trying to speak. She wouldn't be for much longer, Steve knew. Blood trickled from her ears and mouth, tinted the whites of her eyes.

Her gaze met Alina's and it was clear even in her slow and shaky movements that she hoped to reach for a gun. Perhaps the most horrifying part was how silent Bucky became, only standing there, staring straight ahead as if he and Savannah had been the only ones in the room.

Alina knelt beside Savannah, a strange look on her face. Steve reached a hand out toward her shoulder that went unnoticed. Savannah was gurgling, truly struggling to speak.

"Go ahead," Alina said. Something Steve didn't recognize tinged her voice. "I want to hear you say it."

As if Alina's words had cleared the blood and broken bones from whatever part of Savannah's body was preventing her from speaking, her eyes filled with clarity and peace.

"Hail..." Savannah let out an ugly cough that sent blood spattering across her chest and Alina's. Her eyes rolled a few times before they finally settled on a place in the rafters. Steve looked away. He'd seen enough death, he didn't need to watch Savannah die. "Hail...HY—"

The gunshot took Steve off guard more than anything else that had happened in the past thirty minutes. He looked down with wide eyes to see Alina pulling her weapon away from Savannah's temple, a disgusted grimace on her face. She stood slowly and looked at Steve as if nothing had happened.

"Couldn't give her the satisfaction," she said with a shrug.

Steve nodded silently and let his gaze slide to Bucky, who was still standing silently. Before he could even ask the question of what to do with him, Alina hit Bucky over the head with the butt of the pistol that was still coated in Savannah's blood.

She'd done the same thing when she'd come running across the top of a metal containment unit and jumped down between Savannah and Bucky. She was faster and smarter than Steve, a fact he'd simply been forced to accept in the past few minutes.

With Bucky unconscious, Savannah's focus had been broken long enough for Alina to get several effective blows in on her. Paired with the surprise of seeing Alina at all, the tactic had worked much better than Steve could've ever imagined.

"Sorry," Alina said after Bucky's unconscious body hit the floor. "It's the only way I know how to reset him. Hopefully, I hit him hard enough this time."

"Yeah..." Steve said. His eyes came back to Savannah King's unmoving body. "This..."

"Couldn't have been planned for," Alina said. She lowered herself into a squat beside Bucky, rolled her neck a few times, and then sat down. "What now?"

Steve did a once-over of the three people on the ground in front of him. He forced his brain to get back on track.

"Zemo," he said absently. "Zemo... he's still here. Has to be."

"Right." Alina looked at him expectantly. "So what does that mean?"

Steve shook his head.

"It means you call S.H.I.E.L.D. and whoever you need to call to take care of King," he said. If there was one thing he knew, it was that he couldn't drag her deeper into this. "I'll wait until Buck is awake, make sure he's himself. We go from there."

Alina nodded, a tight smile on her face. A smile that seemed grossly out of place but was still appreciated.

"I'll wait with you. Then I'll worry about the body." She glanced between Bucky and Steve. "Just to make sure I don't have to deal with another one."

Steve let out the shadow of a laugh and sat down in the place Bucky had collapsed just a few minutes before. "Sounds like a plan. Then you're out of here. Him and I deal with Zemo. Non-negotiable."

Alina rolled her eyes and saluted. "Yes, Captain."


	25. 24.

**May 14, 2016**

**The Quinjet**

**Siberia**

Alina scrambled to her feet the moment she heard footsteps enter the quinjet. The sight that met her was a gruesome one that sent her heart into her throat. Her eyes couldn't take it in and process it fast enough to offer any help.

"He's okay," Steve gasped, dragging his unconscious and one-armed friend to a seat before he collapsed straight onto the floor. "We're..."

He paused to spit blood and tore his helmet off in a manner that looked painful. There were splotches of dried and fresh blood on his face, on Barnes' face, on both of their hands.

"Zemo?" Alina managed to get out as she lowered herself to the floor beside Steve. "Did he—"

"No," Steve said. "Taken care of. This was..."

He shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut tightly. Something resembling a sob rattled his broad shoulders, and even that small motion seemed to cause him physical pain.

"Okay," Alina said. "Okay. It's okay."

She took a deep breath and stood up again. She readied the quinjet for takeoff while Steve sat on the floor with his arm across Bucky's knee and his face hidden in the crook of his elbow. There were still grief-stricken, painful sounds coming from his body when Alina decided they were as ready as they could be to depart. She approached the cockpit, but was stopped at the sound of Steve's surprisingly clear voice behind her.

"You don't have to do that," he said. His eyes were red and tired as he stared at her from his place on the floor. "I'll... I can get us out. I'll fly. I just needed—"

"You need to rest," Alina said without turning to face him fully. "Clean yourself and make sure he's okay."

They shared a long look, Alina biting her lip and Steve just staring at her, all-but gaping, until he finally nodded and she turned back to the front of the quinjet.

Most of the flight was silent. Steve managed to get himself cleaned up and changed into a t-shirt and jeans, which was more than could be said for Bucky. He was definitely alive, but he was drifting in and out of consciousness from what Alina could tell. He and Steve didn't speak, which wasn't all that different from the journey they had made from Germany to Siberia together.

Something felt different about this silence to Alina. It was less tense than the first trip. There was an air of understanding and comfort to it. 

Steve paced back and forth for a solid hour until it was clear that Bucky was going to stay asleep or otherwise silent and that he'd be okay. 

Only then did he settle into a seat across from his best friend and close his own eyes. The next few hours were filled with soft snores and incoherent sleep talking that Alina took strange comfort in.

She had just started to nod off herself when Steve's gentle hand jolted her into awareness. He smiled apologetically and glanced at the board in front of her.

"Can I make a request?"

Alina raised an eyebrow and glanced at the clouds and endless night sky in front of them.

"What kind of request?"

Steve chuckled and settled into the co-pilot seat, his eyes trained on the board. He tapped in some numbers and flicked a few switches, then sat back and glanced at Alina sideways.

"Gotta pick up some of our friends." A crooked smile crawled onto his face, though his eyes were still plagued with a dark and cavernous sadness. "They need a ride home." 


	26. 25.

**May 21, 2016**

**Wakanda**

Alina wrung her hands together as she absently passed back and forth in front of the large, pane glass window. It spanned down the entire hallway and looked out over a mist-covered forest. 

Steve had been gone for a while, which Alina guessed could only mean that he was having a hard time saying goodbye. She didn't blame him. Even with the promise of Wakandan medical technology, she understood that it had to be difficult for Steve to let Barnes go once again.

"They're prepping him now."

Alina turned around and smiled at Steve. She guessed that it didn't disguise her concern as much as she would've liked.

"I'll be fine," he said with a chuckle. "I just... worry. I know they'll come for him."

"And we will be prepared."

Alina turned around again to face the source of the unfamiliar voice. It was a man she had met only briefly. He had greeted them when she and Steve exited the quinjet two days earlier, but had disappeared after that.

 King T'Challa, the one Steve had been coordinating with to make this work for Barnes. Alina nodded silently at him as he scanned her with his eyes. He still seemed to be uneasy about her presence.

"Agent Malveaux is trustworthy," Steve said. "She's probably the reason we made it out of everything alive. She accessed crucial information about HYDRA and Savannah King that gave us a head start we wouldn't have had otherwise."

The two men shared a glance before both of their gazes settled back on her. She maintained eye contact with Steve, who seemed to be speaking directly to her instead of T'Challa.

"If it weren't for Alina, we would've been going into Siberia blind. The losses would've been... unthinkable."

As the two men turned to each other and continued what must've been an earlier discussion, Alina got lost staring at Steve. 

The cuts on his face had mostly healed over the past two days, but there was still deep bruising on his cheeks that would probably take another few days to fade. 

She couldn't help but wonder how long the rest of his wounds would take to heal, the ones that no one else could see. 

The cavernous depth of his sadness was one that was shared with Barnes, and it was clear losing him again would only deepen the ache of loss he had experienced so many times before. 

And maybe those bruises on his face would only take a few more days to heal, but the injury beneath it, the one in his heart, the rift between him and Stark, Alina wasn't sure about that one either. 

For Alina, the losses were already unthinkable. She wondered what Steve's definition of that would be.

"Hey," he said softly, a gentle hand on her elbow. "You okay?"

"Fine," she said. "Just... taking it all in, I think."

Steve glanced out the window and then back at her, his brow furrowed deeply. T'Challa had left them, presumably to help prep Barnes. Alina dropped her eyes to her hands and tried to work down the lump that was forming in her throat.

_So much loss. So much of it could have been prevented. I could've been the one to stop it. Stop her._

"I'm sorry," she said. Steve shifted, but she didn't look up at him. "I'm sorry that Barnes went through everything he did and that it lasted for so many years. I'm sorry you were dragged through it, too, only to lose him again at the end of it all. I can't... I can't express the guilt that will follow me for the rest of my life because of this. Because of her. Savannah and Rumlow and Pierce were the ones who did this, created this mess, this shell of your friend... but I did it, too."

"Alina—"

"No, I did," she went on. She turned away from his comforting hand and raised her eyes to the foggy Wakandan landscape. "I let it happen. Without mind control, without programming, I did this, too."

"Maybe that's true," Steve said. "But that doesn't mean... Look, I understand the position you were in. You didn't—"

"I had a choice," Alina said. "I know I told you I didn't before, but I did. I made my choice. My life in exchange for his."

The two of them fell painfully silent for several minutes. Neither of them moved. Alina could hardly breathe.

"I was afraid of her, that's true. But I could've been smarter about this. She trusted me for a long time. I could've taken advantage of that way sooner than I did." Alina wiped at her cheeks. She wasn't sure if there were any tears there, but she didn't want Steve to see them. "It wasn't until—"

She scoffed and shook her head, closing her eyes against the wave of pain that came back to her. The place on her abdomen where there had been an infected gunshot wound still ached. She didn't know anymore if it was real or imagined pain.

"There's no excuse," she said quietly. "There's no excuse for what I helped her do."

Alina heard Steve shuffle closer to her. She didn't move away. Whatever he had to say, she'd listen.

But Steve didn't speak. He sucked in a deep breath and closed the space between them, wrapping one tentative arm around Alina, then another. 

He made it clear that she was free to pull away if she wanted, and she surely considered it. Instead, she lowered her head into his chest and let the tears come. 

She wrapped her arms around him and embraced the warmth of his massive body as he held her head in place and did nothing but breathe deeply.

When they separated, they both wore the same sad smile.

"Thank you. I should... I think I might head out," she said. She avoided his eyes and went to turn away, but turned back and planted a kiss to Steve's cheek. "I'll be in touch. Thank you. For everything."

Alina didn't turn back to look at the expression on Steve's face, but she didn't hear him walking behind her, so she guessed he was still standing and staring out the window. 

It was true, what she'd said.

She would be in touch, it just wouldn't be for a while. 

There were things she needed to pin down, people she needed to make sure were dead or otherwise taken care of, before she could bring any more chaos into the lives of the Avengers.

As she turned a corner a bit too tightly, she found herself colliding with yet another mass of warmth. She stepped back and mumbled an apology. Her breath caught for a moment when she looked up and realized it was Barnes she had run into.

"Sorry about that," she said. There was a look in his eyes that Alina couldn't quite define. "I... Um, I hope you find what you're looking for here."

She wasn't sure if there was anything else she could say.

She didn't want to pass on the same apology she'd given Steve, afraid that it might sound disingenuous to the man who had suffered as a result of her fear and passivity. 

Alina gave a short nod and started to walk away, but it was then that Barnes spoke.

"I... I want to—I feel like I need to say something to you."

Alina turned back to him, a pit in her stomach. "There's nothing to be said, Sergeant—"

"Bucky," he corrected her gently. "Just call me Bucky."

"There's nothing you need to say, Bucky." Alina blinked a few times, shaken by the feeling in her hands and chest. "There's no excuse or apology to be made for what I allowed to happen to you. There's no reason for you to try to find forgiveness in your heart, and I assure you I'm already carrying more shame than anyone else could give me with their words."

A surprised and trouble look crossed Bucky's features and he shook his head slowly.

"It's... That's not it at all." He cleared his throat and took a step closer to her. It took everything in her not flinch. "If these doctors can get HYDRA out of my head... I owe it to you."

"That's not—"

"It is. You helped us find her. You gave Steve the information he needed to be ahead of her. Or, at least, less than a thousand steps behind." He nodded slowly, as if he were agreeing with himself that those were the words he had wanted to say. "If they can get her out of my head, she's gone. You made sure of that. And even if they can't, at least my head is the last place she'll ever be."

"Mine, too," Alina said with a chuckle. Then, she steeled herself and met his eyes. "You don't owe me anything."

Bucky smiled and shook his head, then spoke as if she hadn't said that last part.

"You deserve to flush them out, too, whatever that means for you."

Alina nodded and ran her eyes across his face, the bandage on his human hand, the remains of the bionic arm.

"I haven't figured out that part yet," she said. "I hope it comes easy for you."

Bucky nodded and began to turn away in the direction that Alina had come from to finish his goodbyes.

She turned the opposite way and continued outside into the cool morning air, wondering how and where she'd even begin hers. 


	27. plot breakdown

_ **I'm so excited to have finally finished this story, and I'm very proud of the way it connects and interacts with the MCU plot, so I tried to kind of break it down here for anyone interested. Thank you for reading!** _

 

**Chapters 1-5 : Savannah's beginnings**

These chapters establish Savannah's back story and the way she killed her way through the ranks after coming to HYDRA. They are not necessarily based off from any canon, considering they take place from 2003-2009. During this time, I'm just stipulating that Pierce and his handling team had relatively good control over The Winter Soldier and that Savannah comes onto the project and tears it apart because of her own interest in Bucky.

**Chapter 6 : Triskelion collapse**

This chapter runs parallel to the end of _Captain America: The Winter Soldier._ Savannah escapes the collapsing building, gets into a med helicopter, and watches Steve fall from one of the crashing helicarriers. Since the building collapsed on Rumlow, she assumes he's dead, and Pierce was shot by Nick Fury, so he is dead as well. Savannah realizes all of this and hijacks the med helicopter and starts her quest to retrieve the Asset. However, as we know, Bucky disappears after the end of TWS.

**Chapter 7 &8 : Fourth of July **

These are "fill in the blank" chapters. They're again, not necessarily based on any piece of canon. They fill the blank between the MCU timeline and of course, create a plot for this story. Brooklyn may be somewhere Bucky would go while he's trying to sort out his memories, which he started to do following his escape from HYDRA. Savannah has a good idea where he is, so that's why she and her team are right on his tail and only miss him by one day.

**Chapter 9 : Berlin hotel**

This chapter takes place in August of 2015.  _Age of Ultron_ took place around May of that year, so things are in shambles as a result. HYDRA is still coming back together after the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D. in  _The Winter Soldier._ For this reason, HYDRA does not have any established bases of operation, so the idea of them taking over a hotel was quite fitting. After what we've seen of HYDRA in the MCU, it's fair to say that they operate like parasites. It seemed fitting for them to overthrow a hotel from top to bottom, working slowly and covertly enough that the establishment is still functioning, but anyone who knows anything about what really is going on there could easily feel at home.

**Chapter 10 : Geneva chase**

Another "fill in the blank" chapter. Savannah knows now that Rumlow is alive and they are back to working together to chase down Bucky. It  _is_  canon that Rumlow started his rebuilding of himself shortly after waking up in the hospital following the Triskelion incident. So by this point in this story, Brock has developed armor and has started brutalizing anyone he can get his hands on. (aka Crossbones!)

The location is not based on any meaningful piece of canon, but I already knew that I was setting up Savannah and Rumlow to be chasing Bucky through Southern Europe before he cuts to Romania, so that's why I chose Switzerland. Originally this chapter was going to be a chase through the Swiss Alps in the forest, but I thought the city was more fitting because of Steve, Sam, and Natasha's appearance at the end. We learn in  _Ultron_  that Steve and Sam have been looking for Bucky, and I figured that that search would bump up against Rumlow's return & the Avengers tracking Rumlow the way they were at the beginning of  _Civil War._

**Chapters 11 &12 : Rumlow, Savannah, and Alina**

Savannah has held onto a lot of resentment since Rumlow's return. She's trying to put HYDRA back together while he's trying to tear it apart and wipe out any remaining agents or splinter groups. Rumlow wants Savannah to give up the hunt for Barnes and help him destroy HYDRA and every other organization, including the Avengers. Savannah genuinely wants Rumlow dead or otherwise absent so he can stop interfering with her plans, and is solidly convinced that Alina, her right and man of sorts, is all she needs. Alina is her mole inside of S.H.I.E.L.D., to her knowledge. However, Alina has been playing both sides for quite some time and Brock's assault in chapter 12 pushes her over the edge and onto the side of wanting nothing more than to stop Savannah.

**Chapter 13 : Bucky's apartment**

I like the idea of Bucky finally settling down and finding a place he feels safe that he can start to recover. So, I put him in the Bucharest apartment we see in Civil War. This is just a look to get inside his head and to show that he had been living there for months before everything happened in Civil War.

**Chapter 14-16 : radio silence**

Alina gave Savannah faulty intel and bad leads on where to find Bucky to hold her over, and then she falls off the map. Savannah's trust is deeply invested in Alina for a reason that no one else seems to understand. Rumlow raided the Berlin hotel base and wiped out crucial numbers of HYDRA agents and recruits. Things are quickly rolling to a halt for Savannah, and they're on the verge of collapse. She realizes this and starts to lose it, hence the massacre in chapter 16. These chapters are a precursor to Civil War, setting up Alina as a crucial ally for Sam and Steve in their search for Bucky and later, the fight against Zemo.

Chapter 17&18 : the beginning of the end

These chapters overlap with the beginning of Civil War and the aftermath of the Nigeria attack. It's essentially a little bit more behind the scenes and slipping in information about Alina. She and Steve are close allies and Alina is even keeping an eye on Peggy for Steve so she's out of the public eye and out of danger. Alina is the one that texts Steve and tells him Peggy died in her sleep.

**Chapter 19 : coffee in Munich**

Savannah and her agent discuss that she's fled the bases and is on a new mission. She wants to find out who has been killing HYDRA agents. Rumlow is dead after the Nigeria attack, so it's clearly not him and it doesn't look it's the people who worked with him, either. The person is Zemo, and Savannah wants to get her hands on him as soon as possible.

**Chapter 20-22 : Bucharest to Berlin**

Following the end of chapter 20, of course, Steve is there waiting for him at the apartment. It leads to the chase through the city with Black Panther and eventually Bucky's breakout caused by Zemo. In chapter 22, we learn that Savannah and Zemo worked together to coordinated essentially all of Zemo's plans in Civil War, but eventually was duped by him because in the end, he didn't want anything to do with the Soldiers, he only wanted to get the Avengers there and tear them apart. Zemo managed to talk Savannah down, only because she doesn't have time to find a way into his little safe room and kill him, and she decides she'll just kill anyone who stands between her and the Asset, and deal with Zemo at some point after because all that really matters now is the Asset. Zemo stays and waits for things to unfold.

**Chapter 23-24 : Siberia**

Chapter 23 all happens before the disaster with Tony and Zemo. After all the fighting Steve and Bucky did with Savannah and Alina, Alina goes back to the quinjet with Savannah's body and Steve and Bucky continue through the facility to find Zemo. They run into Tony, find the dead soldiers, and the Siberia fight happens as per canon. T'Challa takes care of Zemo and Steve and Bucky board the quinjet with Alina. They head out, and Steve tells Alina they need to make a stop. Alina helps him break into the Raft and free the Avengers that are locked up there.

**Chapter 25 : Wakanda**

The plot of chapter 25 also closely follows the Civil War plot of the mid-credit scene. Alina and Steve talk, Alina and Bucky talk, Bucky and Steve talk and say goodbye, and then Steve and T'Challa talk. Roll credits!


End file.
